Review of Tangerine (2015) by Brett H — 13 Apr 2016

Tangerine is the outlandish and genuinely unique Sundance hit that follows a working girl named, Sin-Dee, on a revenge path to get back at her pimp/boyfriend for sleeping around on her while she was incarcerated.

The film opens with Sin-Dee, conversing with her best friend, Alexandra, after just getting out of jail, and is informed that Chester (the pimp) had been unfaithful and from there the film becomes an insane tour of the scummy, unglamorous streets of West Hollywood as she marches from corner to corner in search of vengeance.

This film is remarkable for one big reason: it was entirely shot using 3 iPhone 5ses with specially-mounted cinematic lenses and it honestly looks great; capturing the raw intensity of the trek through the streets.

The title, Tangerine comes from the striking orange hue of the Los Angeles sunset that naturally comes through in the cinematography and it is quite beautiful to look at. All that said, the story is paper thin and while the characters have funny moments, they're mostly just annoying and their constant swearing and shrieking grows tiresome fast.

The two lead actors, played by actual transgender people, have great chemistry together and keep the film moving, but the dialogue is so damn repetitive with overuses of words like "bitch" and "fuck" that it almost didn't matter who the performers were; it was irritating.

This is a clear-cut example of a Sundance indie hit with a great hook (being shot using Iphones), and while I did enjoy parts of it, mostly I was just annoyed by the characters and didn't really care about their plight; there is a last minute reveal that caught me off-guard though!