The plot sets on the Christmas Eve and revolves around two young black trans-prostitutes, Sin-Dee (Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Taylor), the former is newly released from jail for covering up her pimp-boyfriend Chester (Ransone), only to discover from the latter that Chester has been hooked up with a white tart Dinah (O’Hagan) during her one-month long prison time.
Razmik’s story intersects calamitously, hilariously with Sin-Dee and Alexandra’s, Baker connecting the various dots of this dirty, dreamlike city in a fluid, easygoing way.Believe me, TANGERINE will soon be enshrined in the film history as the first universally-acclaimed feature shot entirely with iPhone, a potent testimony that film now has entered into a new era, where literally everyone who owns a cellphone can be a film-maker, whether the upcoming surplus will rejuvenate the vitality of this art form or swamp us with too many jerrybuilt indie-trashes, one thing is certain, the change is inevitable, and TANGERINE is the lucky landmark.Īnother distinctive feat of indie geek Sean Baker’s fifth feature is its protagonists, adheres to his interest in lower-class objects, TANGERINE is about street trans-hustlers in L.A., a sub-cultural blind spot for most audience.
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Though populated by a bevy of colorful characters, including an Armenian cab driver named Razmik ( Karren Karagulian), who, despite his wife and baby at home, enjoys the company of these ladies of the night (and day, really), Tangerine’s focus remains humble, human-size, and thus the film moves much more nimbly than Dope. But whereas Dope keeps adding on and adding on until much of its animating spirit has been smothered, Tangerine stays loose and lean.
Both are kinetic rambles through corners of Los Angeles we don’t often see on film. Tangerine was a sleeper hit at Sundance, and it shares some similar DNA with a slightly more high-profile Park City breakout, Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope. Somehow Tangerine’s frequent transitions like that, from profane to sublime, aren’t jarring, Baker creating such credible texture that each moment, funny or sad or even a little scary, feels a fitting part of the same thoroughly realized world. Taylor gets to shine in a lovely, gentle musical interlude, which follows a scene of two other women smoking meth (maybe crack?) in the bathroom at West Hollywood establishment Hamburger Mary’s. Rodriguez is a particular delight her Sin-Dee drives much of the action-the film follows her as she tracks down the boyfriend who stepped out on her while she was in prison, and the girl he stepped out with-and Rodriguez is a beguiling bundle of energy throughout, not so much holding the camera as pulling it along with her. center with very little acting experience, Rodriguez and Taylor are both terrific finds, vibrant and witty and, in the film’s softly aching closing scenes, wonderfully natural in moments of quiet reflection. Told with simplicity but deep empathy, Baker’s film sports a refreshingly sober, grown-up worldview that refuses to judge, sensationalize, or do anything other than show lives as they may be, and perhaps are.įor his two leads, Baker cast “non-professional” actresses Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor. Yes, it does concern the occasionally gritty, often titillating lives of trans women hustling on the streets of scuzzy Los Angeles, and yes, it was shot on iPhones (though you wouldn’t know it to look at it), but instead of a leering stunt, Tangerine is an intimate, funny, and surprisingly poignant portrait in miniature of a few fascinating American lives.
Joyfully, Sean Baker’s new film, Tangerine, is anything but.
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A movie about transgender sex workers shot entirely on iPhone 5s may sound like something niche, or alienating, a film experiment that, to legitimize its gimmick, maybe takes a prurient, exploitative look at a marginalized group of people.
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