Tangerine

By: Amos Lassen

"Tangerine" is a film that draws you in and makes you care about the characters even when the topics are prostitutes, pimps, , sex, homosexuality and gender roles. We see individuals who have the same, or even better, values than we have.

"Tangerine" was shot entirely on three iPhone 5s. I was told that at the Premiere, the audience audibly gasped when this rolled on screen during the credits. Sean Baker's "Tangerine" is the story of a trans sex worker, Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez), who "rages her way through Los Angeles on a quest to confront her pimp boyfriend, Chester (James Ransone), and the girl he with while she was in jail for 28 days". There is a great sense of compassion here but it is not the result direct confrontation of issues of sex, gender, and race as they pertain to the characters' lives. Sin-Dee is the target of anti-trans aggression at one point, but the moment is understood only as a way to look at change in the character. This is a film with a lot of style and it manages to transcend the boundaries of race and gender and sexual orientation by acting as if they never existed to begin with

Upon learning from her friend, Alexandra (Mya Taylor), that Chester was messing around with a "real girl", Sin-Dee gets up from her seat at Donut Time and runs down the street with great intensity. of the film's soundtrack.

The film's drama is set on Christmas Eve, and whatever spirit grips Los Angeles is felt by many- we see that in the two police officers who don't arrest Alexandra after a john stiffs her for not making him cum and the two tussle on a city street. Christmas seems to have become an invitation to chaos, though also, and more conventionally, a reminder of people's devotion to others. Sin-Dee eventually catches up with the raggedy Dinah (Mickey O'Hagan), dragging her onto a city bus with the intention of foisting her before Chester like a trophy of war, only to remember her commitment to attend Alexandra's performance at a local bar.

The film also has its own vision of a Christmas miracle, of finding sisterhood, even if it's enabled by the effects of crack: Sin-Dee, despite her animosity for Dinah, meets her enemy halfway in the confines of a bathroom by helping her put her face on. Throughout Sin-Dee and Alexandra's storylines is a third that involves a cab driver, Razmik (Karren Karagulian), whose work exists only to bring a convenient sort of anthropological attention to the politics of Los Angeles's red-light district. We get the feeling that there is going to be a collision of worlds.

What we see is really just another day on the mean streets and the underbelly of Los Angeles- the home of some very sharp talking women and transsexuals who make their living by selling their bodies. They see themselves as fabulous and they run the street in the few blocks that they call their turf.

As Alexandra and Sin-Dee rush around Alexandra tells Ramie that Sin-Dee is coming to see her perform later . He promises to come too but nothing works out as planned and Alexandra performs for an audience of one and her big break will just have to wait.

Now things get messy but it doesn't matter because there is so much energy here that no one really cares. Besides we are riveted on the performances of the two lead transgender actors, Kiki Kitana Rodriquez and Mya Taylor.