christmas in los angeles
by Douglas Messerli
Sean
Baker and Chris Geroch (writers), Sean Baker (director) Tangerine / 2015
Two transgender
friends, Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodrguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor) are sharing
a donut at Donut Time, unable to afford anything else, as the conversation
turns to Sin-Dee’s boyfriend Chester. Having just been released from prison,
Sin-Dee is about to announce that she and Chester are soon to be married, but
her confidant Alexandra mistakes the turn in the conversation as being a
declaration that their relationship is over, and expresses relief that Sin-Dee
is dumping the man who, in her friend’s absence, has been having an affair with
a white girl— who, even worse, is actually a woman! Moments later Sin-Dee,
after recognizing what her friend has just expressed, Sin-Dee is transformed
from a slightly exaggerated figure of the street into a towering Medea, out for
revenge, while the movie—filmed amazingly on a Anamorphic widescreen attachment
to an Iphone—goes into overdrive, speeding up the action as Sin-Dee, briefly
abandoned by Alexandra for her drama-queen tactics, goes on the hunt.
Within the
span of about an hour and a half, Sin-Dee swoops down upon the city with a
nearly supernatural force that makes the grandest diva seem like a
cheer-leading choir singer. Alexandra, slowly traipsing behind her friend in an
attempt to bring some sobriety to the whole affair, is herself stalked by
ghosts of the world in which she lives as while attempting to keep “it
together” as she passes out post-card sized Xeroxed invitations to an event in
which she plans to sing that night in a West Hollywood bar.
If these
two represent a community most Americans might never have before imagined, we
gradually are so fascinated—and, secondarily, appalled by their actions and the
world in which they exist that—particularly given the intense
techni-coloraization of the LA landscape—we simply cannot resist watching.
Those of us
who live in Los Angeles are used to the vast ranges in color of golden yellow
landscape of “winter” afternoons as the light sinks into a sky of striped pink,
purples, blues, and slate greens before the magical electrified landscape
lights itself up for the night; but outsiders will surely not believe what they
see. The landscape is naturally as exaggerated as the always “dramatic”
characters and the world they inhabit. Day and night, we soon perceive, these
female-male prostitutes (a hybrid species as sweet and sour as the mandarin
orange found in Tangiers now called a Tangerine) they live lives of “drama”
without a break, madly loving and hating the world around them while they seek
out moments of self-expression and wonderment in the interstices of their
boisterous actions. But in those moments, as this movie goes marching forward
into nearly manic force, there is little time even to catch a breath.
Dinah, it
turns out, is a fairly ignorant southern hillbilly who, in her squealing pain
of injustice is hardly able to speak; but Sin-Dee refuses to be calmed as she
brutally pulls, punches, slaps, and drags the poor girl through the streets
back into her own territory just south of what tourists describe as Hollywood!
Meanwhile,
Alexandra makes her way through the same streets, picked up by a cheap and
abusive white client determined that she help in “just getting off.” When he
can’t even get an erection, she attempts to escape with her prepaid cash, while
he, in turn, grabs back the money, while she attempts to steal his car keys,
the scuffle ending up in an embarrassing encounter with the local police who
force of the losers of them to stand off.
Another,
equally important plot line tracks an married Armenian taxi driver through his
day, as he encounters a near dying American Indian named Mia and two drunken,
retching party-goers who turn his taxi into a stinky vessel of disdain. But
what becomes even more startling is that this father and breadwinner, Razmik
(Karren Karagulian), has a thing about transgender prostitutes: his preference
being to suck off their cocks!
For most
moviegoers, I am sure, what I have now told you might dissuade from seeing this
film. But the fact is, if you can get over your amazement that such people,
behaving so different from most of society, exist, you cannot help but perceive
them as loveable, if troublingly disturbed beings who, as the movie progresses,
are destined to farcically come together in ways that only somewhat like
Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar might have imagined.
Gradually
this Los Angeles “on the road” spectacle settles down into a comical-tragic
conclusion as Sin-Dee, with her tortured girl in hand, determines to attend
Alexandra’s singing premiere—an event to which nobody else has bothered to show
up.
Determined
to drag Dinah back to her cheating Chester, Sin-Dee returns to the pimp’s
nightly office, Donut Time, at the same moment that the Armenian taxi
driver—having left his wife in mother-in-law, in the midst of a family
celebration—arrives to declare his desire for Sin-Dee.
If Chester
finally convinces Sin-Dee of his love and commitment, the sudden revelation
that he has also had a brief sexual encounter with Alexandra, shatters the
theatrical semblance of reality. Razmik’s strange hunger for transgender cock
similarly creates an incomprehensible barrier between husband, wife, and
mother. This crazy, vital, nasty reality seems ready to collapse, and for a
long few moments, it appears that all of the characters, Raznik, his wife, his
mother-in-law, Sin-Dee, Alexandra, and, most painfully, the totally unwanted
Dinah, must come to terms with the realities of their lives: that they are all
figures who nobody can truly love.
Troubled by
Sin-Dee’s response to her betrayal, Alexandra alone trails after her,
attempting, quite lamely and ineffectively, to apologize to no effect. When
Sin-Dee meets up with a potential client, she pushes Alexandra off; at least
she might bring in some money before the end of this long day.
As she
approaches the car, bigoted youths toss hot coffee into her face in mockery,
drenching her clothes and wig, the most important elements of her female
identity. Alexandra comes rushing forward, dragging her resistant friend into a
laundromat, demanding she give up nearly all the external elements of her
identity and desired beauty so that they might be cleaned. The abandonment of
her wig is the most devastating subtraction. As the two sit in pain waiting for
the washers to complete their spin, Alexandra, in a gesture so graceful and
magnanimous that we are stunned, offers the now hairless Sin-Dee her own long
straight locks. But in that very act, for the first time, we truly perceive
Alexandra’s saintly dome, blessing her with a beauty that her wig could only
hide.
Did I
forget to mention, this all happens on Christmas Eve? Nowhere else could such a
lovingly outré tale be told as a Christmas story, yet Los Angeles is a world
where all the simple myths of snow, crèche, and cathedral have absolutely no
significance. But yes, I will now watch it every Christmas as a true
significance of Christ’s birth. Despite….well it isn’t even despite any longer:
these figures, so very separated from human kindness, have discovered how to
love in way that resonates with a deeper humanity than many of those sitting in
their cozy, ordinary homes.
Los Angeles, July 17, 2015
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