Tangerine

Tangerine

Director – Sean Baker

Writers – Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch

2015, USA

Stars – Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Karren Karagulian

 

Just out of jail when her friend accidentally tells her the truth about her pimp boyfriend’s infidelities, transgender sex-worker Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) goes on a rampage of indignation.

 

Of course, the first thing that prefaces the film is knowing that it was filmed on iPhones (“fitted with Kickstarter-funded lensadapters and software that allowed Baker to lock exposure and focus to his ownspecifications”). Seen some comments that this gives an ugliness, but, to this viewer, it shares the similar over-saturated and guerrilla-style street vibrancy and mobility of ‘American Honey’ or ‘Spring Breakers’. And there is a dominance of streetwise dramatics that allows this “gimmick” to become secondary. Improving on this, the casting of real trans actors and allowing them to improvise the salty language allows and provides verisimilitude and respect. 

This means that a lot of improvised dialogue is bitching and invective, with Sin-Dee’s “wronged lover” reaction proving violent so that we can easily see how she might have got herself arrested. But the last moments of reconciliation make clear the message that, when it comes to the crunch, these are still marginalised people and that all they have are each other.

But what struck me was how much the narrative runs on the tropes of farce. All the strands meet up at Donut Time for comical showdowns and revelations. There’s even a Difficult Mother-In-Law. But what’s more impressive is that, given this, it avoids the typical farce trope of locating humour in the man-in-a-dress symbol. Rather, it saves its ire and mockery for a guy that isn’t honest, living a duplicitous life. 

 

And yet, despite settling for the humour of farce for its denouement, ‘Tangerine’ isn’t truly interested in broad caricatures and allows moments of depth and sympathy for everyone: Razmik (Karren Karagulian) is just as trapped by the constraints of machismo as anyone else is to gender types; it would seem the wife chooses a blind eye; as the subject of Sin-Dee’s wrath, Dinah (Mickey O'Hagan) seems to live a truly scuzzy, restrictive life by comparison, and their gradual moments of bonding speak to shared status trumping personal grievance; even the pimp Chester (James Ransone) seems a little conflicted in confessing his relationship with Sin-Dee. But no one elsee seems to have the freewheeling independence of Sin-Dee and Alexandra, however messy and transitory it may be, and that’s where they come through as triumphant, despite or because of the dangerous world they live in. Through this attention to character, ‘Tangerine’ proves humane and slyly critical of cultural conservatism.