Arriving three-plus years after its last installment, The Girlfriend Experience’s third season retains the series’ focus on sex work as well as its decidedly un-sexy atmosphere. As before, beautiful, wealthy, and influential figures navigate icy modern locales and transactional relationships with steely detachment, their erotic aims intertwined with their hunger for power and control. Yet in most other respects, this latest go-round for the Starz show (premiering May 2)—loosely inspired by Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 film of the same name—charts a unique course, fixating on the role that technology plays in amorous connections, and downplaying, as much as possible, the actual carnal component of its premise. There’s almost no titillation here, but what it lacks in heat, it makes up for with probing ideas about the new sensual frontier.
Taking over from Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz, who spearheaded the first two seasons, this new The Girlfriend Experience comes from writer/director Anja Marquardt (She’s Lost Control), and the change is immediately felt in the show’s aesthetics. Though Marquardt retains some of her predecessors’ fondness for frosty, minimalist interiors, the bordering-on-caricature austerity of Kerrigan and Seimetz’s set design and manicured, angular cinematography has been replaced by somewhat warmer tones, more heavily decorated spaces, and more fluid camerawork. That shift, however, isn’t apparent from the outset, as the premiere opens with Iris (Julia Goldani Telles) being interviewed by a madam in a blinding all-white room, with both of them sporting matching white dresses—a scene that, it turns out, is taking place via a virtual-reality headset, which is the preferred means by which this employer’s escort company, The V, communicates with its staff.
Iris has hooked up with The V courtesy of friend Tawny (Alexandra Daddario), and her plan is to relocate to London and see clients while simultaneously working at a tech start-up instead of continuing to pursue her master’s degree in behavioral psychology and neuroscience. Her real-world job quickly has her partnering with Hiram (Armin Karima) on a platform that analyzes human faces and archival audio recordings of people discussing their fantasies and kinks in order to understand—and predict—individuals’ emotions and desires. It’s boundary-pushing analytics in service of comprehending the mind and the libido, and that mission is naturally in tune with Iris’ side gig as a call girl, since her success in that arena is predicated on her ability to read Johns—Are they dominant or submissive? How far can, or should, she push them? What sort of woman do they crave her to be?—so she can give them what they want, rather than simply what they need. It’s no surprise, then, that for her escort alias, she chooses the name Cassandra, the prophet who wasn’t believed.
Iris’ day job eventually involves interacting with an in-development artificial intelligence dubbed Emcee (Zara Wilson), whom she’s tasked with training to be more human. That process dovetails with her escort services, given that she surreptitiously records her client sessions and, in a daring gambit, uploads the audio clips to the platform in order to better hone its performance. All of this takes place against the backdrop of Iris’ struggle with her father’s early-onset dementia, which is investigated via MRIs and thus serves as another aspect of the show’s fascination with scrutinizing neurological patterns and conditions through techno means. Vacillating between Iris’ office toil, her phone calls with her dad and sister (and escort broker, who arranges her dates), and her budding rapport with her clients—including business celebrity Georges (Oliver Masucci), baseball player Brett (Tobi Bamtefa), and suave Paul—The Girlfriend Experience is an efficient and confident affair, with little excess fat found on any of its half-hour episodes.
To a greater extent than in its first two seasons, Marquardt’s story sidelines X-rated tête-à-têtes to the point of negating them altogether; at least in its first five chapters (which were all that was provided to press), there are only a few instances of overtly dramatized sex, and they’re so brief as to barely leave an impression. While there’s always been a business-like chill to its explicitness, this The Girlfriend Experience feels particularly devoid of steaminess. Quite a lot of that has to do with its interest in the way that sex—and desire—are now filtered through technological interfaces. There’s an academic quality to its examination of its chosen themes, and to its protagonist herself. Iris is a calculating young woman whose every action and expression seems designed to elicit a coveted response, and outcome—a situation that hopelessly blurs the line between spontaneity and premeditation, both in the bedroom and at a desk.
Self-reflection is central to Iris’ dual roles as an alluring escort and an A.I. programmer, which is why mirrors are a primary motif of The Girlfriend Experience, both visually and—via Emcee, who can best be developed via interaction with a clone of herself—narratively. Marquardt puts a premium on reflective surfaces (in bathrooms and hotel suites, in elevators, and on balconies overlooking London’s downtown skyline) and on glowing circular patterns, her form highly attuned to her larger concerns about the mysteries of the conscious and unconscious. At the same time, she takes a cue from Kerrigan and Seimetz by drenching her material in conversations about professional deals and dynamics that are rich in details but nonetheless deliberately opaque, such that one often only has a general impression of what’s actually going on from moment to moment.
Per tradition, The Girlfriend Experience ultimately hinges on the performance of its lead actress, and as Iris, Telles strikes an unnerving balance between formidable intellectual and conniving predator. Marquardt generates tension from the discrepancy between Telles’ youthful appearance and her mature manipulations, and the actress’ ability to lace every smile and gesture with a hint of ulterior motives goes a long way toward maintaining the proceedings’ high-wire unease. It’s hard to get a firm beat on Iris, who moves between different (literal and virtual) worlds with a mixture of confidence and go-for-broke daring, and it’s to the writer/director’s credit that she doesn’t attempt to define her protagonist as merely one thing. Like the show itself, there are layers to Iris that are difficult to pin down, but fascinating to ponder.
