Tangerine

It’s Christmas Eve and Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) just got out of prison. What does she learn first thing from her best friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor)? Sin Dee’s boyfriend has been cheating on her while she was away. So off she goes for revenge that instant!

Chester (James Ransone) is the boyfriend’s name and we learn the facts about the story and the relationships between these characters gradually as the time goes. He is a pimp, and these two friends are his sex workers. The girl he cheated her over is called Dinah (Mickey O’Hagan), and Sin-Dee’s entire pursuit is to meet this Dinah. While we primarily do follow her batshit crazy journey of finding Dinah in a single day before confronting Chester, there are two other equally important subplots running concurrently, revolving around Alexandra and her dream of breaking out of this work loop plus an Armenian cab driver named Razmik (Karren Karagulian) who, through a solid establishing scene showing us he disdainfully rejects a female sex worker, is very much into the transgender ones.

Writer-director Sean Baker’s screenplay is the absolute MVP here! He made sure each and every scene is composed of something interesting. Whether it’s the puppy story, drunkards who vomit in a hired cab, the Cherokee Indian man’s tale about how and why he was named Mia, BBBJ negotiation and the quarrel it creates or Sin-Dee beating the life out of Dinah as she parades the victim across the town, you can’t take your eyes off this film since that’s how intriguing scene-to-scene it is! Just the blowjob in a car wash is allegorical on its own in so many ways! This, coupled with some of the realest performances ever captured on camera portrayed in the middle of a seldom talked-about L.A. subculture is truly eye-opening! At many points, you’d be wondering if these are actors or someone sneaked in a secret cam capturing all of this; it’s that traumatizingly authentic!

Furthermore, the lines used in every single altercation you hear are hilarious! The climactic hot mess taking place in Donut Time with every character you’ve spent time with thus far arguing back and forth with the helpless shop owner Mamasan (Shih-Ching Tsou) in the background is absolutely hilarious! Sin-Dee dragging Dinah barefoot into the club for a drink will make you spit your drink out! In fact, the short relationship between Sin-Dee and Dinah is one of the major highlights here, with them cursing each other out at one point, and smoking dope together at another!

The soundtrack choices are absolute fire! EDM, operatic, ethereal, you name it, it’s in here and it just fits! Just these choices alone elevate the intensity of the proceedings you’re watching onscreen. If flaws were to be pointed out, you don’t exactly feel for the plight of these characters, except for Sin-Dee and Alexandra. Perhaps it is partially due to the resolution not being cathartic enough, in other words, the resolution is not as heartbreaking or tragic as the film hinted it was going to be in the beginning and throughout. The revelation about the best friend’s betrayal is surely shocking, but it is just that, shocking, as opposed to packing an impactful finale punch. Also, the part where the mother-in-law goes on a rogue search for her son-in-law in a taxi in the middle of the night is obviously contrived to make the plot ends meet.