Tangerine (2015)

July 25, 2015 5:40 PM

Just out of jail, Sin-Dee searches LA for her philandering boyfriend/pimp with the help of her friend Alexandra, a singer who is trying to promote her show, in a comedic buddy movie about friendship, drama, and... life

Getting a lot of buzz for being shot all on iphone, it's subjects (rarely portrayed on film - trans women of color), and also for its cast of non-professional actors and a very rare instance of trans women characters portrayed by trans women, plus lots of place-references about parts of LA rarely shown in film, this movie has a lot of new and interesting stuff going on.

posted by latkes (3 comments total)

We watched this last night in the always-amusing-to-me setting of a Berkley movie theater full of old white straight Berkeley couples (probably political radicals and awesome people and more power to them, just funny and kind of disorienting in this movie).

Overall, there was a lot I loved about this: the two leads were both super charismatic and played hilariously off each other. The cab driver was also a convincing character with his own kind of sad charm. The iphone footage worked really well for the most part - I thought he color especially complemented the setting and content, although I did get sea sick in a bunch of the motion scenes.

I didn't love the second act. It got too shrieky for me and I started to feel like the comedy bordered on clownishness or exploitation. I wasn't sure exactly what the film was trying to do and I thought some of the laughs at the expense of "Dinah" bordered on a kind of tedious mysogyny.

The very last scene was really sweet and beautiful and I loved it. Everyone ends up alone except for our heroes - who ultimately stick together. A way better take away than, say, Thelma and Louise for one example.
posted by latkes at 5:48 PM on July 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I thought this was pretty audacious in style and topic, and I liked that it wasn't all tears, but it wasn't all laughs either. I agree that the stuff with Dinah was uncomfortable, but I don't think all of it was being played for laughs (your audience's interpretation may vary).

It was also very surreal because I drove past Hamburger Mary's (where Alex had her show) on the way to the theater, and drove past Donut Time on my way home. In L.A. that's kind of a normal thing, but not usually to that degree.
posted by JauntyFedora at 10:44 PM on July 30, 2015

Saw this over the weekend while I was in SF. I thought it was remarkable. It's such a rare glimpse into the margins of society. Conventional film, even indie film, rarely provides us with such an unvarnished slice of these lives on the margins. Not only that, but the movie never condescended to its subjects by forcing us to wallow in tragedy and despair. It's a goddamn comedy - at the insistence of the actresses at the center of the film; the director initially had a tragic drama in mind, but the actresses weren't having it, and god bless them. It's got humor, sadness, adversity, outrageousness, farce. It's all one big, bold stew. No one was being played for laughs, they all were being played for laughs, the distinction breaks down and it's just messy humanity, brash and on view without any judgment.

This is the sort of film that reminds me of why I'm obsessed with the medium.

It looks absolutely stunning for an iPhone film too. I'm looking into buying the lens and accessories that they used for this thing. Judging how those $180 Moondog Lenses are on backorder, I don't think I'm the only one. It's hard to see how gorgeous this film looks and not want to give filmmaking a try yourself.
posted by naju at 11:36 AM on August 11, 2015 [2 favorites]