Tangerine

Year: 2015
Genre: Drama
Directed: Sean Baker
Stars: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Karren Karagulian, Mickey O'Hagan, James Ransome, Alla Tumanian, Luiza Nersisyan, Arsen Grigoryan, Clu Gulager, Ana Foxx
Production: Duplass Brothers Productions

It's a fun and oddly comforting cliche to assume behind every arrogant windbag film critic, there's a frustrated filmmaker dying to make something worthwhile. While I doubt this is the case in most circumstances, it is partially true of yours truly. Godard, Bunuel, Spielberg; who can possibly stack up amidst such brilliant craftsmen? What on earth could I make, that would be worthy; that could enrich the lives of viewers of the world?

Tangerine would be the film I'd make, if not for the frustrating fact that it's already exists. Kitana Kiki Rodriguez plays the emotionally unhinged Sin-Dee, a transgendered sex worker who has just finished a short stay in prison. She meets up with her best friend and fellow prostitute Alexandra (Taylor) who amid pleasantries and wisecracks reveals Sin-Dee's pimp and boyfriend Chester (Ransone) has been sleeping with another woman. What's worse, the woman in question is cisgendered. We then follow Sin-Dee's stormy odyssey as she tracks down Chester and his new paramore. Meanwhile the more practical Alexandra meets up with her regular Razmik (Karagulian). Dinah (O'Hagan) a third prostitute holes up in a musky motel brothel. And to top everything else, it's Christmas in L.A. and the freaks are out to play.

Merry Christmas!!

Every actor and actress in the film does wonders as earthy and authentic L.A. denizens. Even minor characters such as the LAPD officers who razz the girls on street corner feel so authentic that I wouldn't be surprised if they were real cops. The heart and soul of the film however are Rodriguez and Taylor retrospectively. In a film brimming with shrieking melodrama and gritty inner-city turmoil their sensitive portrayals and deft emotional instincts elevates Tangerines from what could have been an insincere and grossly insensitive slum travelogue.

Bet you feel dumb for wasting money
on that Canon EOS now don't you?

Much hubbub was made of Tangerine's kitschy film-production on the festival circuit. The movie was shot on three iPhone 5s and edited using a host of DIY techniques to make the film seem cinematic. Even as Tangerine echos the gritty aesthetic of Italian neo-realism, Director Sean Baker admits that his cinematic vision was largely cobbled together because of minuscule budget and shooting time restraints. Yet due to clever guerrilla marketing much traction, attention and interest in the project stems from its embrace of lo-fi filmmaking.

If knowing the film was shot on smartphone gets butts in the seats, I applaud the producers for using that as a selling point. Whether the novelty becomes a hindrance a la The Blair Witch Project (1999) or it feels like an organic component to the mis en scene (Chronicle (2012) anyone), is up to you. I'm just happy that Duplass Brothers Productions has added a film to their growing revue that doesn't ventilate about the problems of melancholic white folk.

Heart-touchingly harrowing, caustically funny and thoroughly engaging, Tangerine is an infuriatingly good movie. It's the type of film that takes all the frenetic excitement of making a micro-budget guerrilla movie and puts the audience right into the fray. First year film students will watch and feel pressed to work harder to make more, do more and be more as artists. Furthermore, this exciting and brilliant little film shines a harsh light on the lives of complex and redeemable people who are forced to live on the fringes of an increasingly hostile society. With the T part of the LGBT struggle sadly becoming more grueling, Tangerine will only become more relevant in the years to come.

Final Grade: A-