Tangerine

Director: Sean Baker
Starring: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Karren Karagulian, James Ransone 
Showing: Cinema Nova from September 10
Rating: ★★★1/2

BY KERRYN HILDEBRAND

Filmed on an iPhone 5S, the much-anticipated film from director Sean Baker, Tangerine, offers an insight into the gripping world of transgender sex workers many of us know little about.

Baker creates a flamboyant and utterly engrossing portrayal of vibrant characters, set against the backdrop of the lucrative Los Angeles sex industry.

The versatile iPhone allows Baker to enter the most intimate of settings with the characters, giving the audience an up-close-and-personal experience. There was a constant yellow hue to the majority of the cinematography, but this fitted well with the title of the film.

The main characters, Sin-Dee (Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Taylor), are clear about their distaste for being labelled “drag queens”, and appear to be more concerned with the normalities that remain outside their workplace.

Alexandra is focusing on her singing career while Sin-Dee is preoccupied with her fiancée and pimp Chester (Ransone ), as well as his many indiscretions.

Their lives as sex-workers play a side role in the overall context of the film as the scenes involving actual sex work are shown in a humorous light.

This is the director’s intention. Baker attempts to add a comedic element to the situation, suggesting these girls are trying to lead the most normal life possible, given their circumstances.

The most empowering scene in the film occurs when Alexandra hounds a male customer for neglecting to pay her. It emphasises that she has the ability to call the shots, not the other way around.

The most interesting sub-character in the film is the Armenian taxi-driver Rasmik, (Karagulian), who is well known to many of the sex-workers on the streets of LA.

Throughout the film, Rasmik is shown to be grappling with the ideas of his own sexual identity, in the context of his unravelling family life and relationships.

Although the main characters are enthralling and enjoyable to watch, the film underhandedly manages to marginalise the broader issues surrounding transgender individuals and the sex-industry as a whole.

By choosing to cover the lighter side of the transgender sex industry, the director has brushed over the fact that many transgender individuals do not choose to lead their lives in this fashion, and their personal safety and health is of constant concern on the streets.

The fact that Sin-Dee has recently been released from prison for her prostitution is hardly mentioned in the film, and her decision to take drugs multiple times is also portrayed as insignificant. Sin-Dee’s and Alexandra’s violence towards other characters in the film is also underplayed.

The final scene in the film is entirely heartfelt, following the girls as they gather in a laundromat to wash Sin-Dee’s clothes after she has been doused in urine by a passer-by. In a symbolic gesture of friendship, Alexandra takes off her wig and gives it to Sin-Dee: they both laugh, and for a second they seem to forget the horrid world that awaits them outside.

Apart from the film’s melodrama, anyone interested in strong and colourful characters is urged to see this film.

Love

Director: Gaspar Noé
Starring: Karl Glusman, Aomi Muyock
Rating: ★★★½

By MATTHEW SIMS

French filmmaker Gaspar Noé’s new film Love teeters between a touching love story, a pretentious melodrama and gratuitous pornography, and ends up up as an admirable yet hard-to-love monster.

Noé has never been one to shy away from contentious ideas in his works, with the most notorious example being an 11-minute scene depicting the rape of a woman by a man in 2002’s Irreversible.

Shot in 3D, he now has the chance for the depiction of intercourse to be as in your face as possible, quite literally. While these long scenes do wear thin after a while, they often visually represent the unique power of romantic connections to the point of sexual unity.

Jumping around in an erratic fashion, the film plots out the highs and lows of a relationship between American film-maker Murphy (Karl Glusman) and French painter Electra (Aomi Muyock).

These can range from drawn out conversations about love to darkly funny scenes of sexual misadventures. Murphy narrates these events via clichés in a monotone and indifferent voice.

While a major part of the film is its 3-D sex scenes, it has more depth than pornography veiled as film. At the same time, it is not as intelligent or poignant as it thinks it is, but its subversion of filmmaking is commendable. The 3D not only enhances the realism of the intercourse, but enhances each shot’s mise en scéne.

However, casting Murphy as the film’s protagonist disappointingly narrows its ultimate message to only that of male sexual experience and stereotypical masculinity. One needs to pay attention to the story to follow it, but it has enough value to be worth watching, yet still not as much value as Noé expects.

Ultimately, the film is a two-hour exploration of the inevitable fleetingness of love and lust and how people often confuse the two.

To reduce Love to its graphic sex scenes is unfair. There is much more to be found, not only about the politics and weight of sex in the modern world, but also about how we can love someone deeply. Shining light on the personal act of love, it does not quite blind through its brilliance, but leaves one dazzled and pondering.