Bursting with unbridled humor and nervy, uncompromising brio, “Tangerine” is a study in contradictions. On one hand, this day-in-the-life of transgender sex workers in Los Angeles plunges viewers into one of the city’s scruffiest, most sordid subcultures. On the other, it possesses great sweetness and beauty. The shaggy-dog story of a prostitute on a mission to exact revenge on her two-timing pimp — on Christmas Eve, no less — isn’t exactly the stuff of Capraesque sentiment. But in the hands of a filmmaker as compassionate as Sean Baker, this walk on the wild side turns into a witty and unexpectedly heartwarming meditation on friendship and human nature at its most resilient and optimistic.
Newcomers Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez play Alexandra and Sin-Dee, the latter of whom has just been released from a short stint in jail as “Tangerine” opens. Over a shared doughnut, Alexandra casually lets slip that Sin-Dee’s pimp and boyfriend, Chester (James Ransone), was cheating on her while she was in the can. In a rage, Sin-Dee sets off to find the woman and then confront Chester.
The plot of “Tangerine” is a simple one, giving Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch the scaffolding on which to construct a series of vignettes that are alternately amusing, appalling, revealing and surprisingly touching.
It would be easy to accuse Baker of opportunism in casting Taylor and Rodriguez — both trans in real life, with firsthand knowledge of the community that the film depicts — in a portrait of a world that filmmakers often exploit either for voyeuristic salaciousness or moralistic pity. But he imbues even his most marginalized characters with strength, dignity and even wisdom as they boldly navigate the Dream Factory’s seamiest underbelly on their own self-possessed terms. What’s more, he shot “Tangerine” entirely on iPhones, outfitted with anamorphic lenses, resulting in a color palette that’s at once lush, soothing and lurid.
As one character observes in “Tangerine,” Los Angeles is “a beautifully wrapped lie.”
