Tangerine (dir. Sean Baker)
American actor, director and producer Jay Duplass recently
appeared in the acclaimed Amazon Prime original, Transparent. A show that saw Jeffrey Tambor play a retired college
professor who decides to come out as a women to his family and friends in later
life. Fast-forward a year, and Duplass’ production company (which he runs with
his younger brother, Mark) appears at the beginning of Sean Baker’s film, Tangerine.
Selected for the Official Competition at the BFI London Film
Festival, Baker’s film also hones in on the ‘trans’ world. Though were Transparent explores society’s reaction
to a white, middle class teacher coming out as a women, Tangerine takes aim at Los Angeles; specifically, at the trans sex
workers that populate the sun-drenched strip of Santa Monica Boulevard.
Another facet that both show and film share is comedy. A
register that you’d imagine came less naturally to Baker’s film, where humiliation,
sleazy sexual solicitors and crack cocaine combine. Far from forced, however,
the film’s comic tone serves to add authenticity to the story of Sin-Dee Rella (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez)
and Alexandra (Mya Taylor). Perhaps because the two leads are, for the
most part, playing themselves; enacting episodes that they have encountered,
both high and low.
To this end, Sean Baker and his
screenwriter approached the film in an interesting way. Instead of forming a
plot, characters and themes first, they started with Mya and Kitana, and so
eschewed imposing their own narrative on a world they admit to being ignorant
of. Baker has described Mya as his passport into the trans world, though on
watching the movie, you suspect she is much more than that. She is the beating
heart of Tangerine, a film that is
characterised by boldness from its camerawork to its comedy.
And so it’s at this point that we must
address the technical accomplishments of the film. Faced with a limited budget
of $100,000, Baker shot the film entirely on the iPhone 5s; an aesthetic choice
suited both to the overexposed Californian setting, and the whip-neck pace of
Sin-Dee and Alexandra. If you’re worried that sounds a little trite, don’t be.
Though the opening act is littered with unique close-ups, fast pans and general
trickery, Baker understands that it’s the story that’s important here, not the
medium.
