"Tangerine" is easily one of if not the biggest pleasant surprises of the past movie year. At first, I didn't think I was going to be able to get into the film's vibe. Watching a couple of transvestite prostitutes with depressing lives charging around L.A. throwing tantrums and telling everyone what's what isn't fun for very long, and it seemed that that's all the film would be. But as it develops, and the characters start to develop with it, I sort of fell in love with the movie and even with the people in it who did nothing but annoy me at first.
As "Tangerine" moves along, the lives of the principal characters cease to seem quite so depressing. They're sad, certainly, and between disease, drugs, and thugs, they're almost certain to come to a bad and quite possibly early end. But what "Tangerine" gets just right -- and what makes it so much more than a goof at the expense of a bunch of caricatures we can feel superior to because we're so much more fortunate than -- is that it respects its characters and its characters respect themselves. There's a certain dignity in the way the characters embodied by Katana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor go about their lives completely true to who they are. They don't apologize or ask for sympathy. This is what prevents their lives from being depressing. They and the people around them live on the fringes of a society that doesn't know what to do with people it can't easily label, so they create their own place in it. And in the character of the outwardly conventional cab driver who's smitten with the "girls" and the world they come from, the movie suggests that there are many out there who force themselves into categories that don't completely fit them and admire the kind of freedom in which those who don't conform live, even as they would likely condemn them for their behavior.
And I would be remiss if I didn't also mention as part of this review that the movie is at times uproariously funny.
Grade: A+
As "Tangerine" moves along, the lives of the principal characters cease to seem quite so depressing. They're sad, certainly, and between disease, drugs, and thugs, they're almost certain to come to a bad and quite possibly early end. But what "Tangerine" gets just right -- and what makes it so much more than a goof at the expense of a bunch of caricatures we can feel superior to because we're so much more fortunate than -- is that it respects its characters and its characters respect themselves. There's a certain dignity in the way the characters embodied by Katana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor go about their lives completely true to who they are. They don't apologize or ask for sympathy. This is what prevents their lives from being depressing. They and the people around them live on the fringes of a society that doesn't know what to do with people it can't easily label, so they create their own place in it. And in the character of the outwardly conventional cab driver who's smitten with the "girls" and the world they come from, the movie suggests that there are many out there who force themselves into categories that don't completely fit them and admire the kind of freedom in which those who don't conform live, even as they would likely condemn them for their behavior.
And I would be remiss if I didn't also mention as part of this review that the movie is at times uproariously funny.
Grade: A+