Tangerine was shot on three iPhone 5s smartphones.[2] It premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival on January 23 and had a limited release through Magnolia Pictures on July 10. It grossed $935,984[3] on a budget of $100,000[4] and received critical acclaim for its screenplay, direction, performances, and portrayal of transgender individuals.
Plot
Transgender sex worker Sin-Dee Rella, who has just finished a 28-day jail sentence, meets her friend Alexandra, another trans sex worker, at a donut shop in Hollywood on Christmas Eve. Alexandra reveals that Sin-Dee's boyfriend and pimp Chester has been cheating on her with a cisgender woman. Sin-Dee storms out to search the neighborhood for Chester and the woman.
Alexandra hands out flyers for her musical performance that evening and argues with a client who refuses to pay; their argument is broken up by the police. Razmik, an Armenian cab driver, picks up a prostitute, but ejects her from his cab when he discovers she is not transgender. He meets Alexandra and fellates her in a car wash, then goes home to eat Christmas Eve dinner with his family. Alexandra goes to the bar for her performance, but no customers have arrived.
Sin-Dee finds the woman she is looking for, Dinah, at a brothel in a motel. She hauls her onto a bus to find Chester. Dinah taunts her for believing she is Chester's only girlfriend. Sin-Dee realizes she is late for Alexandra's performance and drags Dinah there instead. She reconciles with Dinah as they smoke crystal meth in the bar bathroom, and Sin-Dee applies Dinah's make-up. Alexandra performs to a mostly empty bar.
Razmik leaves his family to attend Alexandra's performance, saying he has to work, but discovers he is too late and searches for Sin-Dee. Suspicious, his mother-in-law, Ashken, hails another Armenian cab driver, Karo. The driver knows about Razmik's interests, and while initially hesitant, Karo agrees to help her track down Razmik.
Sin-Dee, Alexandra and Dinah go to the donut shop, where Sin-Dee confronts Chester. He insists Dinah means nothing to him and reveals that he and Sin-Dee are engaged. Razmik arrives to buy sex from Sin-Dee, but he is followed by his mother-in-law. Ashken at first thinks Razmik's secret is that he is smoking marijuana, but Chester explains that he has sex with prostitutes. She calls Razmik's wife, who arrives with their infant daughter. An argument among the eight escalates until the shop owner kicks them out. Razmik's wife is upset, but she tells her mother to mind her own business. He and his family go back to their apartment. Dinah walks back to the brothel but is told there is no room for her.
Outside the donut shop, Chester tells Sin-Dee that he also slept with Alexandra. Hurt, Sin-Dee leaves and tries to pick up some clients; they throw urine in her face and drive away shouting transphobic slurs. Alexandra takes Sin-Dee to a laundromat to clean her clothes and wig, and gives Sin-Dee her own wig to wear while they wait.
Mark Duplass offered to fund a micro-budget film by Sean Baker before Baker considered Tangerine. After a two-year festival run for his previous film Starlet, and inspired by the independent films he saw at the New Zealand Film Festival, Baker called Duplass to see if the offer still stood and began working on his next film. Tangerine was executive produced by Duplass and his brother Jay, and produced by Karrie Cox and Marcus Cox with Through Films, as well as Darren Dean and Shih-Ching Tsou.[5]
Principal photography began on December 24, 2014, and wrapped on January 18, 2015, taking place in Hollywood locations such as West Hollywood clubs and Santa Monica Boulevard. After viewing iPhone experiments on Vimeo, Baker and cinematographer Radium Cheung shot the film using three iPhone 5s smartphones.[7] The money saved on equipment was used to pay extras and book filming locations. They used FiLMIC Pro (a camera app that allows iPhone users to pull focus, control the aperture and color temperature of a shot, and capture video at higher bit rates, among other features) and an anamorphic lens adapter from Moondog Labs to shoot in a widescreen format, as well as Tiffen's Steadicam Smoothee to ensure smooth camera movements.[9]
Baker was able to get three Moondog Labs anamorphic adapters for free by contacting the company, as the adapters were still in their prototype stage on Kickstarter, and he informed them that he was working with Mark Duplass on the project. He told them it would let the film crew "shoot the way Sergio Leone would shoot westerns".[10]
Review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes reports that 96% of 160 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Tangerine shatters casting conventions and its filmmaking techniques are up-to-the-minute, but it's an old-fashioned comedy at heart—and a pretty wonderful one at that."[22] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100 based on 35 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[23]
The Hollywood Reporter described the film as "a singularly delightful girlfriend movie with an attitude".[24]Variety's Justin Chang wrote that Tangerine is "an exuberantly raw and up-close portrait of one of Los Angeles' more distinctive sex-trade subcultures."[25]A. V. Wire's Seth Malvín Romero said: "Tangerine is a stylistic tour-de-force. An original, dazzling, and unforgettable portrayal of betrayal and friendship that easily bests any other film this year."[26] In a positive review, The A.V. Club's Ignatiy Vishnevetsky wrote that "for all of Tangerine's movement [...] and all of its slapping and arguing, it's the movie's quietest, softest moments that register most strongly." He concluded: "Perhaps these moments feel so graceful because they are oases; they matter because of the harsh, unforgiving terrain that has to be crossed in order to reach them. This terrain is drawn garishly, vividly, and with a sense of fun."[27]
Awards campaign
The first Academy Awards campaigns for openly transgender actresses supported by a film producer were launched for this film, in 2015, for actresses Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, though neither was nominated.[28]
Accolades
2015 – Directors to Watch (Sean S. Baker), Palm Springs International Film Festival[29]
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