ARTIFICIAL CONNECTION // A REVIEW OF "THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE SEASON 3"
THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE started on the big screen, directed by Steven Soderbergh, and is still one of his standout films. Starring Sasha Grey, the film explored a sex worker and the various clients of hers. It's a rich and interesting film, one that was a great showcase for Grey. The Starz series adaptation (which is produced by Soderbergh) is a fascinating anthology series, with each season taking on different characters and different scenarios. This season is the first not crafted by its original creators Amy Seimetz & Lodge Kerrigan. This season, Anja Marquardt (She's Lost Control) is at the helm. She crafts quite an ambitious scope, perhaps its most ambitious yet, and brings yet another fascinating world to the screen.
Julia Goldani Telles is the new lead this season and plays the neuroscience major Iris. Her day job is at the tech company NGM, which calls for her to study human behavior and be able to predict said behavior. Finding out what people want by reading them is her job, even if it goes against who the person says they are. At the same time, she interviews with a high profile escort service called "The V" and gets hired immediately, based both on a recommendation and her confident interview. The interview itself is different than ones we're used to: it's based in Artificial Intelligence, which also happens to be her day job. She gets hired but never actually meets the person she's hired by. She straps on a VR headset and speaks to a voice. She dives head first into both of these jobs, quickly realizing that her night job can very much inform and improve her day job.
At night, she's known as Cassie and holds all the cards. She quickly becomes a favorite among her clients as she's able to read them and adjust to what they don't even know they want or need. She's able to discover things about them that they normally wouldn't tell other people, and then she brings this information to her day job, using them as unknowing "test subjects" to further her work at NGM. She finds that her tech company isn't so different than her job as a sex worker and they complement each other very well, just as long as nobody finds out how she's sharing information. Her day job may not think too kindly that their newest brainy recruit is a sex worker and her night job definitely won't like the fact that she's sharing information about her clients illegally outside of the workplace.
I've seen the first seven episodes of the season so far and what's most intriguing is the mysterious nature of the two worlds and how similar they truly are. Iris is the type of character who knows exactly how smart she is but her over-confidence often endangers her to a slew of trouble. Her knowledge of neuroscience really allows her to excel at "The V," as she's able to adjust to their behaviors before they even realize what's happening. She's in control in the moment, but her larger life threatens to spin out of control. Julia Goldani Telles plays Iris with a sometimes icy indifference. The tech she champions seems to be missing its humanity and although Iris can read people and get them to open up to her, she is also somewhat detached. Her true reasons of wanting to further the A.I. tech become clearer in later episodes and brings another intriguing level to the table. It remains to be seen if the series can pull off all of the ambitious ideas it lays down (and it lays down a lot), but Marquardt has created a very interesting ride here (it's also interesting to see the craftiness and cleverness of finding ways to shoot intimacy in a post CoVid world). This experience yearns to be explored more. Let's hope it doesn't bite off more than it can chew.
GRADE: B+
CREATED, WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Anja Marquardt BASED ON THE FILM WRITTEN BY David Levien, Brian Koppelman STARRING Julia Goldani Telles, Ray Fearon, Armin Karima, Oliver Masucci, Frank Dillane, Daniel Betts, Tobi Bamfeta, Jemima Rooper, Enzo Cilenti, Alexandra Daddario NOW STREAMING ON STARZ. FOR MORE INFO: THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE