Girl 6 - Sesso in linea

After a confrontation with a director who forces her to take her top off in an audition, the title character of the film storms out and is subsequently dropped by both her agent and her acting teacher. Unable to get `proper' acting work, she moves into the world of phone sex. Getting a job with an office-call firm, Girl 6 is one of many girls, acting out whatever fantasy her callers want. However, the more confident she gets the more she starts to lose touch with herself.

When I write a review of a film I have just seen, it helps me to write a little summary of the plot to help me think about what I have just seen. I sat this because I don't want you to think that my opening paragraph suggests that plot is a key part of this film - it isn't. What exists in the place of a solid narrative is a series of stylish scenes, spinning characters and good performances. I can totally understand why so many people just hated this film - god knows it does itself no favours - however fans of Spike Lee should find much to keep them watching as it is very much the director's film. Lee, however, cannot find anything to really build on in the screenplay and the plot is never very satisfying; the film's energy just about covers this until the end where Lee realises that he hasn't really gone anywhere to generate a traditional conclusion - this means that the serious stuff doesn't ring true.

However Lee is the driving force behind the film and it is his stylish direction that keeps all the fragmented scenes/sketches/skits together. He uses different film stock to good effect and the stuff he does with the camera is typical of what we have seen in his other films - except here he does it a lot more. Of course, this is style with little narrative substance and that is not a good thing but, if you are going to do style without substance, then you'd better do it as well as Lee can do it. The film leaps all over different styles including the Jeffersons, Foxy Brown and many others; in a way I suppose this is meant to be 6 losing touch with herself on the way to finding inner confidence and peace but it doesn't really work (and the `falling down a dark lift shaft' subplot/snippets are too heavy handed on top of this).

Lee's direction is the first reason for watching this film, but equally worthwhile is Randle (and not for the reason rather juvenilely suggested by many reviews here). Randle is a great actress and she shows it here - it is rather sad that she has actually done quite few films and too many of them have her in small supporting roles (Bad Boys I & II, Spawn, Space Jam, Malcolm X and so on). Here she has very little character to work with (not even a name!) but she made me forget that simply by the range of her performance. She is asked to do a lot and, despite lacking audience involvement in 6, her performance shows the range that she has - she should really be given better roles on the basis of this film, it's just a shame there aren't really that mean good roles for actresses approaching their 40's (never mind black actresses approaching their 40's!). The support cast features plenty of well-known faces - none of them actually have characters, but mostly they do OK whatever their contribution is. Washington is a good-looking guy and does OK with a character that I never understood. Lee himself does his usual role - he is amusing but contributes to the lack of narrative. The callers include people like Lee-regular Byrd, Peter Berg, Imperioli and Richard Belzer - they do what is asked of them and it isn't their fault the film doesn't work. Batson's acting coach is OTT, Campbell does nothing but look sexy, Madonna is actually OK but other like Berry and Silver merely show their face. Tarantino is suitably brash prior to his public falling out with Lee and Turturro just seems to be there for the sake of finding a part for him. Despite the many stars, it is Randle that carries the film - her character is poor but her performance is great.

Indeed this sums up the whole film. To watch it is rather infuriating as it lacks characters, meaningful narrative and plotting. If you are a fan of Spike Lee then you will enjoy the style of the film and the fact that his behind-the-camera skills are there for all to see. Aside from this the only other reason to really watch it is a great performance by Randle that will almost act like an audition tape for her - no character but plenty of range and ability! The vast majority of people will dislike this film and I understand why. There is nothing to it but Lee and Randle make it worth a watch once.

A good performance by Theresa Randle carries the movie. Theresa is believable and charismatic in the lead role (not to mention good-looking [grin]).

There are a number of nice touches and funny bits. The way Theresa is gradually drawn into the phone-play and begins to half-believe the fantasy is well done. Halle Berry does a good cameo and the practice session where Naomi Campbell firmly puts down a sleazeball caller is hilarious.

Enjoyed the music too. Prince wrote some of the songs and in particular there is a really nice blues vocal in the scene where Girl 6 waits to meet 'Bob Regular'.

Complaint: I wish Spike Lee would stay out of his own movies - he can't act. His flat, emotionless performance spoils the credibility of his supposed friendship with the Theresa Randle character.

Girl 6 could have been helped from a little trimming, this is the first and probably foremost criticism. At 106 minutes, which should be average length for any movie to aspire to have, it's a few minutes too long and although one might lose the visual metaphor of the drop down the elevator, whatever it really means, the whole sub-plot involving the little girl falling down and breaking her head is unnecessary throughout and brings the film to a halt every time the 'newstory' segment pops up. And every so often, though not frequently, a technical touch or a performance might be a little too over the top, too flamboyant even for the Spike Lee Joint standard.

But aside from this, Girl 6 is fun and enjoyable "fluff" for Spike Lee, which means that it's still risqué and poignant and sharp-tongued (more than usual here and in more ways than one, some pun intended), and loaded with hit or miss R&B songs (this time by Prince, not quite as cool as Batman tracks but close). It's about an aspiring actress (Theresa Randle) who hits roadblocks in her career when she gets told to take her top off for a "TOP Hollywood DIRECTOR" called "Q.T.", and played not too embarrassingly by the man himself. After some crappy gigs she goes for something that involves sex but only with the vocal chords, and indeed involves a kind of on-the-spot improvisation: phone-sex operator.

From here the plot kind of takes off, however episodically and sometimes very loose in structure (there's some connection with one phone sex guy, Bob, whom Girl 6 crushes on and gets practically dumped, and a "Scary Caller" who treats her like dirt), and mostly involves us seeing what the person on the other line might look like in grainy video, and her own fantasies of movie-stardom from her favorites. This latter part provided the funniest and most visually creative scenes of the picture for me, particularly when Lee himself becomes Mr. Jefferson from the Jeffersons and when Girl 6 becomes Foxy Brown. While some of the visual flourishes we all like from a Lee Joint are present, and maybe too typical, it's fun to see Lee work through talky material, and all the actors have fun with their roles; especially Randle, who gives it her all in a seemingly breakthrough serio-comic turn and who gets to dress up and go for broke in many moments.

Bottom line, it's not as bad as you've heard or seen it rated on this site, but it's also somewhat of a trifle in the Lee cannon, albeit within its own limitations almost (though not quite) the level of romantic-comedy we might expect from the director of She's Gotta Have It. Hey, it's better than She Hate Me, at the least, and somewhat less incoherent.

Spike Lee is a man that loves to provoke. He awakens the viewer as he asks to participate in what he is showing on screen. Most of Spike Lee's films have been unmercifully panned by his detractors, including the printed media in this country, and it's a shame because Mr. Lee is one of today's most original creators. In "Girl 6", based on a screen play by the talented Suzan-Lori Parks, a playwright herself, the director directs his satire to the porn industry. If you haven't seen the film, stop reading here!

Judy, the young and black woman at the center of the story, is seen at the start at a casting session with Q.T. (Quentin Tarantino, at his most obnoxious self). Judy is asked by the director to show her breasts, which she reluctantly does, but she is so repulsed by the experience, that Tarantino, or no Tarantino, she's out of there.

This young woman can't find work to enable her to live. The solution presents itself when she answers an ad for a sex phone line after having turned down a woman who runs a strip joint. It appears that Judy is a natural for the job. Suddenly she becomes one of the most demanded woman in the place. She listens attentively, talks soft and is never too pushy or mean to the men who seek her.

Judy makes a mistake when she gives someone her home phone number and goes to meet one of her "regulars" at Coney Island's boardwalk. That's when the dangerous creep keeps persecuting her with threatening phone calls. Since she basically is an actress and wants a change, she decides to leave New York and go to Hollywood, a sad mistake. The last thing we see her do is go to another casting agent who demands to see her breasts, the same thing that the great Tarantino demanded from her! In fact, Spike Lee shows us how women, especially young ones, are vulnerable to fall pray to these unscrupulous operators just to get into the movie business. One thing is evident: Spike Lee is a director who gets magnificent performances out of the stars of his films. In this case is the wonderful Theresa Randle who as Judy runs away with it because she is perfect as Judy. In fact, this young actress turns a great performance under Mr. Lee's direction. It's a shame we don't see her in roles that will let her show her talents in a positive way.

The large cast does amazing work. Madonna does one of the best things she has ever done in a film with the manager of the strip tease joint. She's perfect! Quentin Tarantino plays himself with all the characteristic excess. John Turturro is seen briefly as Judy's agent. Michael Imperioli and Peter Berg are seen as some of Judy's callers. Gretchen Mol, Debi Mazar, Naomi Campbell, Jenifer Lewis are part of the sex phone women, and Ron Silver shows up at the end. Spike Lee himself is the next door neighbor, but he takes a back seat in order to leave the front to the amazing Theresa Randle.

Girl 6 is not a laugh-out-loud comedy so much as it is a satire of the nature of the struggle of the typical New York City actress with big dreams. She can hardly get a job and eventually resorts to using her talents to the most basic and competently lucrative degree as a phone sex girl.

The film held my interest to a great degree, but only because of the visceral experience of watching it. John Corso and Malik Hassan Sayeed's cinematography, which ranges several different sorts of film stock, and Lee's consistent talent with the placement of music combined with the film's fascinating look is beautiful. There are several feelings that I felt that took me on a ride, but they were empty feelings, fleeting ominous moods, energy. The story doesn't fit. Thus, the movie is only stylistically moving. If the script had been directed by anyone else, it likely wouldn't be worth it at all.

The substance of the film is basically nonexistent. The satire is not cohesive because there is no real point the film makes. This is certainly one of Spike Lee's worst films, but it certainly has a beauty lathered on top.