☾⋆
Shot entirely on iPhone 5s devices,
Sean S. Baker and Chris Bergoch’s Tangerine (2015) presents a Los Angeles that pops and shimmers on the screen, all sprinkled donuts
and neon retail signs. It’s present-day Christmas Eve, yet the backdrop feels
humid and close; there’s a sense that if you stepped through the screen and
pressed a piece of bubblegum to the concrete pavement, you’d hear its sticky
sizzle. The opening sequence introduces Sin-Dee-Rella (Kitana Rodriguez) and her
friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor): two transgender sex-workers with conflicting
opinions on best to spend their day. Sin-Dee is ‘back on the block’ after a
month-long jail stint, and in hot pursuit of the cisgender woman her pimp/boyfriend
has been sleeping with in her absence. Alexandra attempts to reconcile two
disparate efforts: quelling her friend’s violent resolve, and flyering for her
own singing performance at a club later on.
Rodriguez and Taylor
take their lead roles with a raciness entirely befitting the clammy vibrancy of
their terrain. The opening sequence is a tour-de-force of quick-fire oaths and
increasingly inventive insults (‘his breath always smells like he been eating
ass for days’), woven with glimpses of the exquisite fragility which so haunts
their respective characters. At some point, Sin-Dee’s mission finds her
strutting precariously down Hollywood
Boulevard
In one scene, a cisgender woman attempts to turn tricks on streets that are traditionally populated by transgender workers, only to be shoved and reprimanded by a shaken customer (‘What the fuck is that? That corner’s not for pussies’). In another, Alexandra’s client fails to become erect during a transaction, and withholds payment in a chilling display of careless misogyny. Alexandra’s indignation is fierce, yet there is a childlike triviality to her objections which doesn’t marry with the brutality of the episode. Her defensive mask is hardy, and many years in the making. It appears to radiate inwards, too; preventing her own mind from fully digesting the true damage and sorrow of repeated abuse. And yet, despite the heady pace, the film knows when to slow down, and never to greater effect than during Alexandra’s singing performance, through which her alienation is laid beautifully bare.
In one scene, a cisgender woman attempts to turn tricks on streets that are traditionally populated by transgender workers, only to be shoved and reprimanded by a shaken customer (‘What the fuck is that? That corner’s not for pussies’). In another, Alexandra’s client fails to become erect during a transaction, and withholds payment in a chilling display of careless misogyny. Alexandra’s indignation is fierce, yet there is a childlike triviality to her objections which doesn’t marry with the brutality of the episode. Her defensive mask is hardy, and many years in the making. It appears to radiate inwards, too; preventing her own mind from fully digesting the true damage and sorrow of repeated abuse. And yet, despite the heady pace, the film knows when to slow down, and never to greater effect than during Alexandra’s singing performance, through which her alienation is laid beautifully bare.
The denouement will
remind everyone of something. As Tangerine’s
various faces and voices are brought together under one roof (Donut Land, Santa
Monica blvd) we’re offered an almost Shakespearean blend of tragedy, farce and
chaos: Much Ado About Nothing,
perhaps, though the film offers none of the cohesive resolutions of Shakespeare’s
play. In Tangerine,
nobody is innocent, yet as the characters go their separate ways, the audience
are left to ponder who might shine on, and who will fade into the night, like
the various fates of the Christmas Eve stars above the City of Angels, where
Baker and Bergoch laid their scene.
by
Rosa Barbour
