<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Thursday, March 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

‘Tangerine’ a vital peek into L.A. street lives

The Columbian
Published: July 17, 2015, 12:00am

Caitlyn Jenner and her glamorous Vanity Fair cover brought unprecedented visibility to transgender women. Laverne Cox, the first transgender actress to win an Emmy Award, fronted Time magazine, an image of grace and growing acceptance.

The transgender women at the heart of “Tangerine” come from the opposite end of the spectrum — the invisible and maligned. They’re sex workers who troll the streets of Hollywood, turning tricks in parked cars. Their hangout is an all-night doughnut shop. They keep company with pimps, druggies and the overlooked.

Shot entirely with iPhones, writer-director Sean Baker’s fifth feature is an urgent, intimate look at a day in the lives of two transgender prostitutes. It illuminates Los Angeles’ fringe-living, often unseen characters: the hookers and dope fiends, the late-night cab drivers. They’re so colorfully realized, in fact, that you may not really want to spend a whole day with them. “Tangerine” shows their lives ruled by desperation with few bright spots.

It’s Christmas Eve morning, and fast-talking, frenetic Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is fresh out of a monthlong stint in jail. She and best friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) are so broke, they’re splitting a doughnut. As they catch up, Alexandra tells Sin-Dee her pimp/drug-dealer boyfriend was unfaithful while she was away. Sin-Dee becomes instantly determined to find the woman who did her wrong.

She leads a reluctant Alexandra on a mission through the streets of Hollywood and West Hollywood, into laundromats, strip-mall restaurants and seedy-looking hotels.

The actresses play their roles so convincingly, and the iPhone footage looks so immediate, at times it almost feels like watching a depressing documentary.

Meanwhile, Hollywood taxi driver Razmik (Karren Karagulian) is having a typical day. One of his passengers is a woman whose dog just died. Another drunkenly barfs all over the cab’s backseat. At the end of his workday, he returns to the apartment he shares with his wife and baby girl. On this night, his Armenian-speaking in-laws are their holiday guests.

It’s a testament to the story, performances, direction and camerawork that “Tangerine” feels so present and realistic, but that’s also what makes it so upsetting.

Loading...