‘The Girlfriend Experience’: Season 3 Is An Engaging & Elusive Look At Sex, A.I. Desire & Predictive Behavior Via Big Tech [Review]

The way technology has affected relationships, dating, and sex in the modern world is fairly commonplace today. Sci-fi obviously has lots of dystopian ways of commenting on this too (see the psychological submissive girl robot fetishization archetype in “Ex Machina”). However, the way technology has affected the transactional nature of sex is still pretty limited on-screen, surprisingly given the world of cam girls, OnlyFans, Tinder, Grindr, Patreon, and the general easy-access and ubiquity of online sex. Yes, there are films like “Cam,” “PVT Chat,” “Beach Rats” and more, but rarely has there been something as future-forward as the third season of “The Girlfriend Experience,” which looks at sex and its negotiable nature through predictive behavior, neuroscience and cutting edge A.I. technology.

Based on Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 film, “The Girlfriend Experience” (he’s the executive producer of the show who spun it off into the hands of new filmmakers to riff on the original idea), ‘The GFE’ centered around the idea of high-end escorts specializing in providing “the girlfriend experience” (GFE), a more premium and exclusive service of sexual, but also emotional satisfaction. Seasons 1 and 2 (expertly created, written, and directed by Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz), pushed the envelope of the original idea, playing with notions of control, submission, power, identity, toying with settings of corruption and Witness Protection Programs, and certainly pushing the boundaries of cinematic storytelling on television (these shows were incredibly told from a visual perspective, some of the best shows of the last ten years, easily).

However, Season 3, created, written, and directed by Anja Marquardt (“She’s Lost Control”), is probably its most conceptually bold one so far, playing on the bleeding edge of A.I. science, technology, and how it applies to behavior and sex. It’s heady and cerebral stuff, a little mystifying and elusive too (this is a show you have to pay strict attention to), but it’s rewarding and super intriguing too (at least so far, with the two episodes given to press for the SXSW Film Festival).

‘GFE 3’ centers on Iris (Julia Goldani Telles, that some may know from “The Affair”), a 20-something American girl looking to radically reboot her life, following signs of an onset-Alzheimers-like analysis and finding about her father (he’s suffering from something, but they’re unclear what the prognosis is exactly). With this uncertainty in the air—and leaving behind friends, family, and a half-finished neuroscience degree at an Ivy League university— Iris relocates to London after being headhunted by an elusive tech start-up called NGM. However, through a sophisticated cam model friend (Alexandra Daddario, who seems to only cameo briefly), before she leaves, she is introduced to The V, a high-end escort agency in the U.K.

Her plan is to work as a neuroscience researcher by day while providing girlfriend experiences for clients at night. Iris is extremely confident in both fields, and whether she has previous experience in the escort game is unclear, but likely given the way she takes to it so fast (perhaps one small drawback about the show, the sharp fringe nature of the storytelling means some elements are either vague, unclear or left for elucidation later).

What she soon discovers in London, as she begins to excel in both fields quickly, is her double life is feeding into each other. While satiating clients, she discovers that this high-end escort work and the privileged clientele leave her with a wealth of intriguing behavioral data. Some of the show points to the notions of whether desire is actually an illusion, ideas of free will, and other rarefied theories usually threaded through narratives about A.I. (those who dug the potent big tech/artificial intelligence elements of Alex Garland’s “Devs” should probably feel at home here too).

But otherwise, “The Girlfriend Experience,” in its third season, might be a little too indefinable to pin down in terms of where it’s heading and what it wants to say—perhaps that’s by design. Desire can be elusive and enigmatic, and Marquardt’s show is crafted like it’s coyly flirting right now. But what seems clear is Iris’ client sessions are giving her a compelling, even captivating edge in the tech world and vice versa.

One suspects, like previous seasons of “The Girlfriend Experience,” this one might be for rarified audiences. One thing that differentiates the shows, and it seems like a wise decision if ‘GFE’ was visually daring before, the boldness of photography is dialed back a little bit, which seems smart given how conceptually and intellectually daring the series is (give the audience one less thing to be confused about seems judicious).

“I’m self-taught; writing code is like playing music for me,” one of her NGM co-workers says, which speaks to the eccentric and mysterious nature of the company, its employees, and their various tenets. What those philosophies are and even the work they’re doing is vague—even Iris and all the employees of their Google-like causal campus don’t seem to know what they’re doing exactly, but it might just be decoding desire.

Each team seems to be pitching experiments to see how they can innovate in the world of desire, sex, and predictive behavior. One person jests people think they are an online dating service playing with A.I., but that even seems too pedestrian and limited in scope for what they’re trying to achieve.

“People’s personal experience of what turns them on. It’s not about what they want,” Iris says at one point, deconstructing ideas about her A.I. project that mirrors human emotion. “But how they are feeling about it in the moment. The object of desire is a foil. It doesn’t actually exist.”

It’s unclear how and when “The Girlfriend Experience” will come together, and in the first two episodes, there’s certainly a lack of major conflict. But it appears ‘GFE 3’ is about to take Iris down a deep path of intellectual, evocative, and erotic exploration. [B+]