Tangerine (Sean Baker, 2015): USA

Reviewed by Anna Acuna. Viewed at Antioch University, 2015 Santa Barbara Film Festival. 

Sean Baker is an experimental genius for his comedic-drama, Tangerine, in so many ways. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2015, with much positive feedback. With a micro-budget of budget of only $100,000, Baker was very limited, so he decided on a radical approach. The entire film is shot on three iPhone 5s’, and the result is surprisingly photogenic and high quality. The talent in the film was very raw, because the actresses Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor had no formal film acting experience, and were interviewed and hired from the Los Angeles LGBT center. The plot was inspired by true life stories told by these lovely transgender women to Sean Baker and his colleague Radium Cheung.

Kitana Rodriguez plays a feisty, hot tempered prostitute that goes by Sin-Dee Rella. In the beginning of the film, Sin-Dee has just been released from prison and finds out from her best friend and fellow prostitute, Alexandra (played by Mya Taylor) that her pimp boyfriend Chester has been cheating on her with a “fish” (slang term for a “real” woman). Sin-Dee flies into a fit of rage and stomps down Highland and Santa Monica, in an attempt to find one of the two people who have done her wrong and come to some kind of conclusion (with her fists). The saga begins, and the two women split off for the day, with Sin-Dee on an odyssey to find her targets to retaliate against, and Alexandra trying to make money in her given profession, and perform at night in a club.

Shot on the iPhone, the expected effect would be shaky, blurry at times, and hard to watch like many of the videos regular humans try to take in their daily lives. Baker beat those odds, and with the use of apps, a special adaptor, and a steady lens, made a movie that was not easily discernible as a phone film. The film is called Tangerine, quite literally because of the tangerine filter he used. The orange hue of the film is very reminiscent of the actual hue of Los Angeles’ polluted, but beautiful sky. Baker manages to capture the je nai se quoi of the rough nitty gritty underbelly of Los Angeles.

The movie is set around Christmastime, which adds a very strange parallel to these woman’s lives and the normative world around them. Baker alluded that this choice was originally aesthetic, but then he realized the deeper connotation was more emotionally meaningful than just decoration. The film’s themes of friendship run deeper than just a familiar bond, because in Sin-Dee and Alexandra’s case, all they have to protect themselves from the harsh and harmful world around them is their comedically over the top personalities, and each other.  Although there are factors throughout the film that threaten to tear their bond apart, the women choose to stay connected, and that close bond is one of the most intriguing and heartwarming factors the film has to offer.