Tangerine (2015) - Sean Baker

Christmas Eve in Los Angeles, transgender prostitute Sin-Dee Rella has just been released from prison.  Meeting up with her friend Alexandra, who also happens to be a trangender prostitute, the two catch-up.  When Sin-Dee Rella learns that her boyfriend and pimp, Chester, has been cheating on her with a white woman, she is outraged, storming out into the Los Angeles streetscape in search of Chester and Dinah, the white woman he has been cheating on her with.  Sean Baker's Tangerine is a kinetic piece of filmmaking, a film that moves a mile-a-minute through the streets of Los Angeles, feeling almost like a road-movie in the way its characters, particularly Sin-Dee Rella, are moving from place-to-place non-stop.  Being a Los Angeles resident, the first thing that really stuck out to me about Tangerine is how much the film captures the diversity and unique qualities that make LA interesting.  This film captures the grittier, dirtier aspects of Hollywood, not focusing on the Cityscapes of Downtown Los Angeles but on the street-scapes of Hollywood, with the graffiti-soaked concrete and hustle and bustle street-life feels very visceral.  Some of this is undoubtedly helped by the filmmakers' decision to photograph the whole phone using an iPhone, which was a brilliant choice in providing a must more lived-in but unhinged type of aesthetic.  Tangerine is a very funny film, with a script that keeps the laughs coming, relying heavily on the performances of its two main leads, who simply don't disappoint.  I was particularly enthralled by the Sin-Dee Rella character, a woman who is the definition of fierce, demanding the viewers attention every-time she sets foot on the screen.  Tangerine is a film that is sure to be classified as a comedy, and rightfully so, but what really made the film work for me was the understated sorrow and human drama Sean Baker is able to create.  While not a film about Tinseltown in the slightest, Tangerine captures the sorrow and loneliness of these characters in brief, understated moments of poignancy, truly living up to Los Angeles being a city of broken dreams.  Alexandra is the most straightforward example of this, a beautiful singer, who spends most of the film trying to get people to come to her latest performance.  Essentially no one shows up, and little sympathy is given, with her plight capturing the harsher realities of Los Angeles, where everyone is transfixed on their own lives.  From Dinah to Razmik, a married taxi-driver who has a thing for transgender woman, Tangerine is a portrait of loneliness and the need for companionship or friendship, with Sin-Dee Rella and Alexandra eventually coming to the realization that having one and other is far more important in the larger scheme of things.  A love-letter to Los Angeles that finds the beauty in things that many people view as ugly about Los Angeles, Sean Beaker's Tangerine is another fascinating film by the filmmaker that beautifully manages its comedy and drama.  

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