Tangerine

Tangerine (15)

USA 2015  86 mins  Dir: Sean Baker  Starring: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Karren Karagulian, Mickey O’Hagan, James Ransone

“Los Angeles is a beautifully wrapped lie,” observes one character late in Tangerine. It’s a rare moment of reflection in a film that’s brash, vibrant, often shrill and occasionally tiresome but never less than entertaining. Its chief gimmick is that the whole thing was shot on a modified iPhone 5s, which succeeds in giving the film a necessary street-level urgency and fills the screen with oversaturated colour.

It’s Christmas Eve and larger-than-life transgender ‘ho Sin-Dee Rella (Rodriguez) is fresh from a 28 day stretch after taking the fall for her no-good drug-dealing pimp boyfriend, Chester (Ransome). She meets up with her calmer, more likeable buddy Alexandra (Taylor) in the Donut Time fast food joint on which the LA transgender prostitution business is apparently centred. Alexandra than lets slip that Chester has been repaying Sin-Dee’s loyalty by enjoying a dalliance with a lady of the heterosexual persuasion, specifically a “white bitch with a vagina and everything”. This throws Sin-Dee into a vengeful rage of even more exaggerated femininity and she struts off to track down both Chester and the ‘fish’ who’s been the focus of his carnal attentions, flatly ignoring her reluctant sidekick’s protestations that she “don’t want no drama”. Still, at least this gives Alexandra the opportunity to present everyone they encounter with a flyer for her debut singing performance in a bar that very evening. In a second strand, loyal customer Razmik (Karagulian) – a married Armenian immigrant cabbie – cruises the streets hoping to secure Sin-Dee’s services. Turns out he’s not too fussy about who he goes down on, but draws the line at women without penises.

There’s plenty of ribald fun here for broadminded audiences of all genders, including a blowjob that’s perfectly timed to match the cycle of a carwash and a sleazy punter who attempts to negotiate a 50% discount from Alexandra (“I can do all the work and jerk myself off. Maybe you can just grab my balls or something? I’ll be super-fast…C’mon, it’s Christmas!“). Sin-Dee’s quest entails an awful lot of striding around the streets, with copious back-of-the-head shots that occasionally make Tangerine feel like a more colourful and profane Dardenne brothers movie. But director Sean Baker has plenty of empathy for his protagonists, and the initially rather broad performances eventually calm down a bit as a couple of twists set up an unexpectedly moving ending. For liberal arthouse audiences, there’s also plenty of opportunity to work themselves into a PC top trumps pickle in the bar afterwards. Without wishing to come over all Germaine Greer, for example, is misogynistic abuse and violence really OK when it’s perpetrated by a trans character?