Tweet
Sundance 2015 review: Tangerine - juicy LA sex trade tale literally iPhone'd in
4/5stars
Three smartphones were the tech used to capture this lively yuletide
story of a pimp, a meth-head and two transgender prostitutes in
modern-day Los Angeles
Room with a view ... Tangerine
Sunday 25 January 2015 14.11 GMT
Of all the many accomplishments of Sean Baker's Tangerine, the most
arresting is the fact it was shot using just three iPhone 5s phones,
meaning permits weren't required. That means Tangerine shows a side of
Los Angles rarely captured on film - or, well, whatever the thing is
inside an iPhone 5s that records video.
We meet transgender prostitute Sin-Dee (Kiki Kitanna Rodriguez) on
Christmas Eve as she hunts across the city looking for her pimp
boyfriend (James Ransone) and the meth addict (Mickey O'Hagan) that he
has been sleeping with. She's followed by fellow sex worker Alexandra
(Mya Taylor) and their stories intersect with Razmik (Karren
Karagulian), an Armenian cab driver with a crush on Sin-Dee and
others.
When the film starts with a rollicking soundtrack on the sun-blistered
streets ofLos Angeles, it's like nothing you've seen before. The
colours and the sun are so bright and dazzling they blot out the grit
everywhere but in the people stalking the sidewalks. Using mostly
first time actors, Baker achieves both highly stylized shooting and
authenticity simultaneously. Everyone is moving, moving, moving trying
to accomplish some goal. "There is nothing out here but the hustle,"
Alexandra tells us. If anything, that is the moral of the movie.
But as the sun goes down, the action slows and the cinematography and
music follow pace. There is still plenty of drama, but the film
becomes a bit more conventional and even sags in places.
On the whole, though, it is real and visceral, maintaining a pace
almost too hectic to sustain. After a borderline unbelievable
showdown, where all the stories converge in a fluorescent-lit Donut
Time, Tangerine ends pretty much where it began, with Sin-Dee and
Alexandra unsure what to do with themselves, as if there is no point.
But getting to see lives like these - not just transgender hookers,
but cab drives, drug addicts, beat cops, fast food workers, and the
people who are struggling on the fringes of society - creates the kind
of movie that we don't see very often. The iPhone 5s becomes nothing
more than a style choice, one that is daring but entirely
inconsequential to the bigger picture.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/25/sundance-2015-review-tangerine-iphone-film-movie
4/5stars
Three smartphones were the tech used to capture this lively yuletide
story of a pimp, a meth-head and two transgender prostitutes in
modern-day Los Angeles
Room with a view ... Tangerine
Sunday 25 January 2015 14.11 GMT
Of all the many accomplishments of Sean Baker's Tangerine, the most
arresting is the fact it was shot using just three iPhone 5s phones,
meaning permits weren't required. That means Tangerine shows a side of
Los Angles rarely captured on film - or, well, whatever the thing is
inside an iPhone 5s that records video.
We meet transgender prostitute Sin-Dee (Kiki Kitanna Rodriguez) on
Christmas Eve as she hunts across the city looking for her pimp
boyfriend (James Ransone) and the meth addict (Mickey O'Hagan) that he
has been sleeping with. She's followed by fellow sex worker Alexandra
(Mya Taylor) and their stories intersect with Razmik (Karren
Karagulian), an Armenian cab driver with a crush on Sin-Dee and
others.
When the film starts with a rollicking soundtrack on the sun-blistered
streets ofLos Angeles, it's like nothing you've seen before. The
colours and the sun are so bright and dazzling they blot out the grit
everywhere but in the people stalking the sidewalks. Using mostly
first time actors, Baker achieves both highly stylized shooting and
authenticity simultaneously. Everyone is moving, moving, moving trying
to accomplish some goal. "There is nothing out here but the hustle,"
Alexandra tells us. If anything, that is the moral of the movie.
But as the sun goes down, the action slows and the cinematography and
music follow pace. There is still plenty of drama, but the film
becomes a bit more conventional and even sags in places.
On the whole, though, it is real and visceral, maintaining a pace
almost too hectic to sustain. After a borderline unbelievable
showdown, where all the stories converge in a fluorescent-lit Donut
Time, Tangerine ends pretty much where it began, with Sin-Dee and
Alexandra unsure what to do with themselves, as if there is no point.
But getting to see lives like these - not just transgender hookers,
but cab drives, drug addicts, beat cops, fast food workers, and the
people who are struggling on the fringes of society - creates the kind
of movie that we don't see very often. The iPhone 5s becomes nothing
more than a style choice, one that is daring but entirely
inconsequential to the bigger picture.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/25/sundance-2015-review-tangerine-iphone-film-movie