AustLit

'Being rich and earning a lot of money is relentless, wearying work and having to work at relationships and intimacy is a further burden on the already time-poor. When rich men engage 'the girlfriend experience' they get more than just sex (as if 'just sex' were even a thing). With the girlfriend experience there are add-ons: comfort, affection, glamorous company, intellectual stimulation, distraction, flattery, an empathic ear-or at least an authentic-seeming performance of it, which is just as good. Of course there is sex, negotiated within certain parameters, but there is also a customised form of intimacy that is obliging and undemanding. The girlfriend experience is a bespoke romantic service, tailored to individual sexual and emotional needs. It is a rarefied form of sex work for an exclusive clientele, although in many ways the woman's labour is utterly mundane.'  (Publication abstract)

'Under the Skin is adapted from Michael Faber’s eponymous speculative fiction novel (2000) in which an alien disguised as an attractive woman hunts hitchhikers in the Scottish highlands. Once she has determined that a man is appropriate prey, she drugs him and delivers him to a subterranean abattoir hidden beneath a farm where, in a disturbing allegorisation of factory farming, he is castrated, fattened up like foie gras, and prepared for shipment back to the alien home planet where human flesh is an expensive delicacy. This adaptation of Faber’s novel is the long-anticipated third feature film from director Jonathan Glazer.' (Introduction)