NFL
By: Matt Overton
The Ninth Joint
It’s not often that I put on a movie that my fiancée has never heard of, and she actually stays to watch it to completion. But it would appear that Girl 6 is a special film. Whatever style or substance or lack of personality Clockers was missing, Girl 6 totally makes up for it. When a struggling actress gets fed up with the movie industry, she turns to a phone sex hotline for employment. Considering it’s a kind of acting, she discovers that she actually excels at the phone-bone business and puts her acting on the back burner.
Girl 6 is a unique exploration of Black femininity. It’s as authentic as possible with a script by Suzan-Lori Parks, and it pulls no punches. It helps that this is consistently hilarious. The protagonist is only known as Girl 6, and we watch as she starts off by proudly walking away from an interview with “QT” (a great cameo by Tarantino that leans heavily into self-aware mockery). She finds herself in an upscale call center, where she becomes gainfully employed as a fulfiller of male fantasies.
It’s all hunky dory at first as 6 revels in her newfound discovery of her incredible phone-bone skills. She remains steadfast against renewed advances by her ex-husband, feels empowered by her work, and is generally enjoying life much more than when she was on the audition grind. In the movie’s most hilarious scene, she has a falling out with her acting coach after she’s chastised for not feeling comfortable taking her top off—that’s part of the biz, but she doesn’t want to accept that.
Girl 6 is very honest about how Black women are perceived by the rest of society. Her new boss makes it very clear that she expects all of her operators to play the part of a white woman by default unless requested otherwise. 6 doesn’t have many qualms with this job; in fact, she loves being the one in power as all these lonely, horny men are eating out of the palm of her hand. Once Spike hits us with that dolly shot, though, it’s clear she has some conflict to deal with that arose from an extra kinky and violent customer.
I was surprised at how engaging Girl 6 turned out to be. It’s an honest look into showbiz that features great cameos from QT and Halle Berry, and is outrageously funny. I loved the cutaway bits to 6 fantasizing about playing a famous TV or movie character, especially the sitcom segment where Spike plays her overprotective father. This was a huge improvement over Clockers, if you ask me.
