Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

The Girlfriend Experience: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

The secret life of a law intern.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 30, 2016

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.

Christine (Riley Keough) is an aspiring lawyer and a sharp, and unusually attractive, law student. She's just been given a prestigious internship at a highly respected law firm where she works under David Tellis (Paul Sparks). It would seem she has her hands full, but a new world quickly opens up to her. Her friend and fellow law student, Avery (Kate Lyn Sheil), is making serious money as a high-end escort who offers a "girlfriend experience" to super-wealthy clients who pay her thousands of dollars for only hours of her time not only for sex, but intimate, honest, emotionally connected companionship. It's not long before Christine gets in the game. At first, she works under a "facilitator" named Jacqueline (Alexandra Castillo) who screens her clients and sets her appointments. But as Christine finds herself further immersed in the world, she becomes all too familiar with both its benefits and its dangers, all the while trying to maintain her standing at school and the firm.

Christine's turn from innocent law student to professional escort, or "girlfriend," is as much about her as it is her clients and the money they pay. Once she becomes acclimated with the routine -- the meetings, the money, the sex, and yes, whatever emotional attachment grows from both parties and pushes to meet in the middle -- it seems to excite her. Thrill her. The money is great, the sex fine, but there's something else. And that something else, the world beyond the warm physical joining and the cold detachment that's really at the center of money-for-companionship, is what's truly at the center of the show. But it's not there in plain sight. It's obscured, slow to reveal, if ever making itself clearly known. It's the mystery, the draw, what makes the show compelling. It's not the sex. It's the idea behind it, the emotional response on both sides but hers in particular and the lingering question as to whether it will change her, for better or for worse, personally and professionally alike.

Christine becomes forced to balance her dueling professions, both of which are demanding and taxing, mentally and physically alike, in their own ways. And whether the two will intersect, one way or the other, is the show's other appeal. Will her dual lives converge? How will she, and those closest to her -- if anyone really is close to her -- respond? Indeed, The Girlfriend Experience explores, in its own, subtle, way, how the relationships Christine provides actually distance her from herself and the world. They undress her, physically for sure but mentally and emotionally, too. How does her work change her as a human being? Does the stimulus make her a better person? Or does the absence of authentic relationships anywhere in her life leave her empty and vulnerable? The show cleverly folds all of the questions into a riveting storyline, condensed in short-burst twenty-something minute episodes that, through each one, reach just a little bit further to the truth as Christine gets a little bit deeper into the realities of a momentarily satisfying, but ultimately destructive, lifestyle.

Riley Keough is strong in the lead role, nailing the part's challenging physicality but also subtly, gently, and alongside the show's broader arc, exploring herself -- what she was, what she is, and what she is becoming -- as her business blossoms. The show is shot softly, elegantly, often a combination of intimate close-up, distance, and mild distortion. Music is subtle and light, almost undefined, at times, a simple sound that's more conducive to individual determination of meaning rather than mood-defining element. The show proves enormously intriguing and engaging, and the steady hands of Directors Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz, who created the show, share directing duties throughout the season. That cohesion maintains the carefully constructed illusion, critical to fully exploring the story, one little twenty-something minute sliver at a time.

The Girlfriend Experience: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Girlfriend Experience: Season One contains several short, throwaway extras on disc two.

• An Inside Look (1080p, 2:17): A plot and character overview.
• What Is The Girlfriend Experience? (1080p, 2:12): A quick discussion of what a "GFE" service entails.
• The Look of The Girlfriend Experience: Voyeurism Is Here (1080p, 1:52): A short discussion of the show's technical construction.

The Girlfriend Experience: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.