If you know anything about the wonderful Tangerine, you will know that it was shot entirely on iPhones. There is much else to celebrate in Sean Baker's immersion in the world of LA's transgender sex workers, but it would be wrong to say that the medium is not key to the film's abundant appeal. Using anamorphic adaptors to create a widescreen image, Baker makes a virtue of the bold images the phones generate.
No recent film has been so intoxicated with sense of place. The brash primary colours point up the plastic signs, loud lipsticks and moulded restaurant furniture to create a beautiful garishness that echoes the anthropological photography of Martin Parr. One astonishing sequence, shot from inside a vehicle passing through a carwash, could comfortably be displayed on a gallery wall.
The film may be sold on its technological innovation, but it is still drenched in all flavours of urban humanity. We begin with a conversation between Alexandra (Mya Taylor) and Sin-Dee Rella (Kiki Kitana Rodriguez), both transsexual prostitutes, in a neon-bright doughnut shop to which we will return. Alexander tells Sin-Dee that her boyfriend Chester (James Ransone) has been sleeping with a “fish” (work it out for yourself, girl) named Dinah while she has been in prison. Sin-Dee embarks on a local odyssey with a mind to tracking down and bitch-slapping her rival.
Every now and then, Razmik (Karren Karagulian), an Armenian taxi driver, drifts in and out of the action. Harassed at home by a ferocious mother-in-law, he relieves tensions with the transgender hookers. That habit will eventually lead to a comic conflagration plucked straight from a French farce.
Tangerine acknowledges that these are hard lives to lead, but the film ultimately stands as a celebration of the characters' mad resolve. Taylor and Rodriguez (limited actors, kept within safe zones) are allowed to be funny, but we are never encouraged to laugh at them or at their situation. Indeed, set on December 24th, Tangerine ends up drenching itself in an original distillation of full-strength Christmas spirit. Deck the halls.
