7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Christine Reade is a second year student at Chicago-Burnham Law School, and a new intern at a prestigious firm. Working hard to establish herself at the firm, her focus quickly shifts when a classmate introduces her to the world of transactional relationships. Known as GFEs, they are women who provide "The Girlfriend Experience" - emotional and sexual relationships at a very high price. Juggling two very different lives, Christine quickly finds herself drawn into the GFE world, attracted to the rush of control and intimacy.
Starring: Riley Keough, Anna Friel, Louisa Krause, Carmen Ejogo, Paul SparksErotic | 100% |
Drama | 40% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 7.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (2 BDs)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
The world's oldest profession mixes with the world's most loathed occupation in The Girlfriend Experience, a Starz original program that explores the world of ultra-high end and very exclusive prostitution. At this price point, the girls don't simply sell their bodies. They sell their emotions to elite clientele. The series is emotionally dark, sometimes unnerving, and curiously fascinating. It bends back the façade of the high dollar and high class world and explores the crudest of human emotions -- lust, companionship, greed, and sometimes, maybe most dangerously, love -- as they revolve around the people who pay for a moment and the girl who lives multiple lies for money. Money cannot buy everything, however. It can't buy real. It can buy a facsimile of real if the girl is very good at what she does, but at the end of the day her emotional attachment doesn't extend much farther than the envelope full of cash. And if it does, it's game over. A reserved, intense, and exhilarating spectacle, The Girlfriend Experience is one of the hottest shows on TV, a compelling watch for its brisk pace, smart writing, strong acting, and engaging, binge-worthy story arc.
GFE, not BFF.
The Girlfriend Experience: Season One's 1080p transfer comes from a digitally photographed source. The results are fine, at least within the program's rather soft, very lightly diffuse structure. Details are rarely exceptional. The image is satisfyingly revealing, but it's not sharp. Brighter locations are more apt to showcase finer skin and clothing textures, but much of the show is dark, shot gently, and without much concern for filling the screen with razor-sharp textures. Many of the show's locations are elegant, high-class, very clean and smooth; there's not much opportunity for raw, rougher surfaces to shine. Colors are likewise a bit muted. The palette is generally well defined, but the show doesn't go out of its way to push bright shade after bright shade onto the screen, favoring a more mild, reserved, often cold and bleak and dark, appearance. Heavy noise does creep into many frames, particularly during lower light scenes. Black levels generally hold up very well with only occasional pushes to excess brightness. This isn't the Blu-ray format's defining image, but within the series' standards it looks quite nice.
The Girlfriend Experience: Season One features a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 lossless soundtrack that's mostly reserved rather than raucous. Many of the presentation's highlights stem from gentle, but involved, atmospherics. Din at a bar, hushed whispers and footfalls in a school commons area, light chatter in a classroom, clatter at a restaurant, and other locations with more people and opportunity for the sound to stretch are almost always impressive. A few discrete effects pop in every now again, also to strong, natural effect. Music is often understated, a deep, low, almost monotone note that lingers underneath, but with positive stage saturation. Dialogue dominates, and the spoken word comes through cleanly, accurately, and with positive prioritization from the center speaker.
The Girlfriend Experience: Season One contains several short, throwaway extras on disc two.
Not to be confused with the feature film of the same name, Creators Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz's Starz original program The Girlfriend Experience is, however, "suggested by" Director Steven Soderbergh's 2009 picture. That said, it makes for a fantastic long-form story. It's contagiously engaging, not so much entertaining as it is alluring. Less about sex and the business of high class prostitution and more about how the lifestyle shapes one young woman's life, The Girlfriend Experience will keep audiences coming back for more. Fortunately, this Girlfriend Experience doesn't cost much, and while there are no significant extras, video and audio presentations are fine. Highly recommended.
1975
Alternate Cover 2015 Reissue
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