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Simply put, Girl 6 isn't Lee, per se. He directed it, and gave the film his usual
trademark vignette of people floating along while they talk. However, Girl 6 belongs to
Parks and Randle.
Unlike Lee's other films, Park's story
adeptly laid bare the stereotypes that plague womanhood - virgin and whore - and how those
constructs impede maturation.
"Girl 6" (the name we know her by until the film's end), is an unemployed
actress who takes a job as a phone sex operator. Randle's controlled and sensitive
performance is delightful. "Girl 6" creates a bevy of characters - Lovely and
Bridget, among them - that creep into her "identity-less" psyche. For the
majority of the film, she is defined by everyone else but herself - her ex-husband (Isaiah
Washington), her neighbor (Lee), casting directors, customers.
Girl 6's preoccupation with a fatally
injured girl, who inadvertently fell down an elevator shaft, mirrors her own sense of
spiraling. Although "Girl 6" assured her neighbor that she knows reality from
fantasy, her unraveling denotes the blurred line.
Girl 6 gives you humor, pleasure, passion and complexity, without the usual harangue Lee
hangs around his audience's neck.
M
March 2000
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