For Colored Girls

Retaining the play's poetic style, the film's lead cast consists of nine African-American women, seven of whom are based on the play's seven characters only known by color ("Lady in Red", "Lady in black"Lady in Yellow", etc.). Like its source material, each character deals with a different personal conflict, such as love, abandonment, rape, infidelity, and abortion. The characters are represented by a color: Jo/Red (Janet Jackson), Juanita/Green (Loretta Devine), Yasmine/Yellow (Anika Noni Rose), Tangie/Orange (Thandie Newton), Alice/White (Whoopi Goldberg), Gilda/Gray (Phylicia Rashad), Crystal/Brown (Kimberly Elise), Nyla/Purple (Tessa Thompson), and Kelly/Blue (Kerry Washington). Each of their stories are different, but the characters interact within each other's lives. The show opens with Tangie throwing her latest lover out of her house. Right after that, as Juanita arrives to piss Frank off with a houseplant, Kelly, who works for child welfare, attempts to visit Crystal on behalf of the children, but she does not get very far. As she flees Beau Willie, she gets some good advice from Gilda. Meanwhile, Alice shows up to beseech Tangie for money, but gets rebuffed instead. Alice goes out to raise money, and encounters Yasmine, who gives her a little money. Yasmine, a dance teacher, is boasting of how dancing gives her underprivileged girls opportunities, a way out of the ghetto, and in to college. Nyla tells her friends in the class about her graduation night with a pack of cousins, then has to throw up. Kelly's husband comes over and arrests two men, one of whom is Jo's husband. Juanita is waiting in Jo's office, with Jo's terrified assistant, Katina, running scared and making tea, and Crystal running late for work. Jo rejects the work of her photographers, demanding work of the highest caliber. Juanita is let into the office, and attempts to interest Jo in her work at starting a medical center. But Jo refuses, asserting that everyone rises and falls by their own merits. Juanita tries to warn her about the suffering in the community she cannot even see. She asks Jo what the price she has to pay to be so powerful, yet so self-centered, then forcefully storms out. Kelly and her husband visit a physician, who reveals she had an untreated STD that has stripped her of the ability to have children. So Kelly runs off. Juanita gives condom advice to a group of women, only to be bothered by Frank. She brushes him off and returns to giving the women sensible talk about how to avoid unwanted consequences from sex. Tangie, who works as a bartender, finds a man and decides to show him a night of pleasure. That night, Crystal implores Beau to stop drinking, while he cares only for her accepting his marriage proposal, in the hopes of increasing his welfare benefits. Jo, meanwhile, implores her husband to call her, revealing to us that they'd had a fight that night. At the same restaurant, we also see Yasmine and Bill having a magical night. Alice comes home, grumbling that Nyla moved her box. But Alice shows Nyla the money she has been collecting and asking for, and gives it to her, believing that it is for Nyla's entrance into college. It is not enough, and asking Tangie is discussed, but Alice instead tells Nyla that her god will provide. Yasmine continues her date, explaining that she loved dance more than anything, until she met Bill. Meanwhile, Tangie is having a great time, until she discoveres the man thinks she is a prostitute. She throws him out only to be met by Nyla in the hall. Nyla requests money, which angers Tangie. Tangie correctly diagnoses Nyla as pregnant, which Nyla denies. Tangie relishes her cruelty, enjoying the idea Alice will hate Nyla the way she hates Tangie. So she tells her about an abortionist, and how to find her. Jo is in her house when her husband returns. He claims his battery died, but that does not stop her. We learn that he took money from her bank account for an investment that failed; the source of the fight she mentioned earlier. He feels emasculated, stripped of his automatic right of command of the house, in favor of him submitting to her will...