![]() distributors, Magnolia Pictures, have recently launched a campaign to secure Rodriguez and Taylor Oscar nominations, for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively – making them the first transgender actresses to secure such accolades. Tangerine also has a chance at making the record books, as its U.S. At the same time, with its relentless forward momentum, all-but-lawless milieu, and ferocious but sympathetic heroines, Tangerine would make an arresting – if exhausting – double bill with 2015’s other most exciting film, Mad Max: Fury Road. In the way it uses peripatetic characters to map the life of a city, as well as its hyper-alertness to dialect, there is something oddly and unexpectedly Joycean about Baker’s film – perhaps this is what Ulysses would have looked like with transgendered hookers in place of Bloom and Dedalus. More than a mere foil to Sin-Dee, Alexandra is tough, watchful and tender – her song number will touch the hardest hearts, and she also gets the film’s single best one-liner, in a priceless exchange with a parsimonious John (Scott Krinsky). Electrifying as Rodriguez is, the film’s most memorable performance is Taylor’s. A bathroom exchange between Sin-Dee and Dinah, and a genuinely moving conclusion in a laundromat, are like oases in a furnace. Rodriguez’s performance – alternately little-girl charming and dangerously volatile – is a human fireworks display, interspersed with moments of eerie calm. The film’s tone is a delicate balance, and it relies almost entirely on the complementary energies of Rodriguez and Taylor, who hold the centre of a narrative that starts at 100 m.p.h. life on the edge of destitution – including a visit to what must surely be the most convincing crack den ever captured on film. The thrill of Tangerine is, in fact, the way it combines farcical momentum with an utterly persuasive portrait of L.A. However, Baker has more than sociology on his mind, and Razmik’s life eventually intersects with those of Si-Dee, Alexandra, Dinah and Chester in a climactic act of pure, delirious farce. ![]() This strand of the film bears a certain similarity to Jafar Panahi’s current documentary Taxi Tehran, in which a cab is also used to capture a cross-section of urban life. Unfolding in tandem to Sin-Dee and Alexandra’s misadventures is the daily grind of Armenian taxi driver Razmik (Karren Karagulian), whose fares (including B-movie veteran Clu Gulager) form a microcosm of L.A. Christmas that is notably lacking in good will to all. As if all this wasn’t festive enough, the events transpire on Christmas Eve – albeit a sun-throbbed and neon-lit L.A. While Alexandra focuses on the hustle of making a living and preparing for her debut nightclub performance, Sin-Dee kidnaps Chester’s other woman, Dinah (the terrific Mickey O’Hagan), and marches her through the city for a showdown with Chester at his business headquarters in a donut shop. ![]() The lightning-paced plot follows Sin-Dee (Rodriguez), recently released from prison and ‘going hard’ on a mission of revenge after her best friend Alexandra (Taylor) inadvertently reveals the cheating ways of Sin-Dee’s boyfriend/pimp, Chester (another sly turn from Baker veteran James Ransome). The film’s shooting gimmick is an attention-grabber on paper, but on screen it’s quickly forgotten, thanks to the hilarious, riveting performances of the leads, first-time actresses Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor. ![]() Sean Baker follows up his tart but tender-hearted off-Hollywood vignette Starlet (2012) with something even zestier in Tangerine – a ‘transgender revenge comedy’ shot in down-at-heel LA using only iPhones fitted with anamorphic lenses. Starring Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Karren Karagulian, Mickey O’Hagan, James Ransome. ![]()
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