- Title: FRANCE: 'GIRL 6' PREMIERES AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
- Date: 11th May 1996
- Summary: CANNES, FRANCE (MAY 11, 1996) (RTV) NIGHT-SHOTS: (CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY) CROWDS WATCH ARRIVALS AT "GIRL 6" SCREENING
- Embargoed: 26th May 1996 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: CANNES, FRANCE
- Country: France
- Reuters ID: LVA6DAJFZBH7U4S4VGY3FZEP17CA
- Story Text: Supermodel Naomi Campbell lent a touch of glamour to the Cannes screening of Spike Lee's star-studded film "Girl 6" -- a look at the perverse side of telephone sex and a woman's search for identity.
An impressive Theresa Randle in the title role, and old and new music from Prince failed to hold together a loose series of lightning cameo appearances by Madonna, John Turturro, Quentin Tarantino and model Naomi Campbell among others.
After refusing to bare her breasts at an audition, Randle joins a hotline agency and finds her way as a successful and uninhibited fantasy girl. She starts to enjoy the job, and her pleasure is equated with drug addiction in potent close-ups.
"Men come out weaker, and women stronger...In 'Girl 6', the women are in fact running the show, they master events perfectly.
They are capable of stimulating their listeners while reading a magazine or nonchalantly doing their nails," Lee said of his ninth feature film.
Lee is still the new voice of black American cinema since taking the title a decade ago with "She's Gotta Have It", which similarly starred a New York woman surrounded by would-be suitors.
The low-budget movie managed only disappointing box office receipts in the United States, making less than four million dollars after five weeks. Critics were less than enthusiastic.
Almost all Lee's films have surfaced in the French Riviera resort, but his 1989 competition hit "Do The Right Thing" lost out to "Sex, Lies and Videotape" and two years later "Jungle Fever" was eclipsed by "Barton Fink".
Desplechin's bid for the Golden Palm, "How I Quarrelled...My "Girl 6" deals with a woman's search for her identity through the fantasy life of phone sex.
"Girl 6" (Theresa Randle" is a young actress trying to make it in New York. When money and work are scarce, she becomes a phone sex operator to make ends meet and embarks on a journey of self-discovery.
Lee has not entered his film for the Palme D'or Competition this year, after his previous efforts failed to win the coveted award.
"I'm a lot older than I was before and have a different philosophy about awards," he explained at a news conference.
"You set yourself up for a lot of heartbreak when you allow a group of people, whether it's the Cannes jury or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences the authority to say whether you work is worthy or not", Lee said, adding that out of 161 Oscar nominees this year only one represented an ethnic minority.
Lee said that whereas in his first film "She's Gotta Have It" a woman has sex with three men at once, in the post-AIDS era he would be "hung from the highest tree" if he made such a movie. He said that fear of sex has brought about a boom in telephone sex and in the United States it has grown to be a billion-dollar industry. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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