A transgender revenge dramedy? It's a Christmas miracle!
Tangerine may be bombastic in its approach, but there is real warmth and joy within the film
Transgender revenge dramedies are somewhat hard to come by in a cinema. In fact I’m not sure many of them exist at all. If you need to bump up your street cred, then, Tangerine will definitely be the edgiest film you’ll see this month, perhaps this year. Fortunately it’s got enough substance in it that you can get more out of it than just a good story.
When trans sex worker Sin-Dee finishes her four-week stint in jail, she finds out from her friend Alexandra that her boyfriend/pimp has been cheating on her. An insane day-long chase across Los Angeles ensues that is part buddy movie, part revenge thriller, part tragedy, part comedy. This mishmash of genres turns out to be a strength and a weakness. There’s an excellently seedy nature to the story as it deals with the nitty-gritty of low-down life in LA, and individual plotlines such as the struggle of Razmik, an Armenian taxi driver and family man who has fallen too deep into the underbelly of prostitution, pack a genuine emotional punch. However the film often feels massively scatterbrained in its pursuits, and while the individual performances – a fantastically charged Kitana Kiki Rodriguez as Sin-Dee, a hilariously sassy Mya Taylor as Alexandra, and especially the perfectly-performed turn by James Ransome as the pimp in question, who damn near steals the movie with only ten minutes of screen time – keep the dialogue amusing in passing, there are barely any real laughs in the movie.
I can’t decide if the fact that _Tangerine _was shot entirely on an iPhone 5s is an impressive or a distracting one. The film’s cinematography is colourful, all-encapsulating, and feels quite naturally lit, but throughout the film I felt that something was wrong with the graininess of the film, the uncertainty of the camera movement, and the odd contrast and focus.
With an exceedingly in-your-face soundtrack, at times distracting camerawork, and a thoroughly defiant attitude towards detractors of its subject matter, Tangerine may prove hard to swallow for some viewers at first. But with profound moments of insight into its protagonists’ lives, and a brace of strong performances to boot, it proves to be a rewarding experience to those willing to treat it with patience.
Verdict: 3.5 Stars
