![]() It has nowhere near the grit, toughness, or unforgiving violence that, say, a Buddy Giovinazzo film would have in exploring the harsh American street terrain… but that’s likely a reason for its critical success (the last thing a filmmaker striving for the affections of the latte crowd wants to do is have that comfortable audience coming out feeling ‘bad’ – and certainly not blaming themselves for any of the socio-economic realities the film expresses). With its main setting the drug and prostitute-riddled West Hollywood intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Highland Avenue, where a slip of a tongue during a conversation in the dirty donut shop that acts as the epi-center for much of the drama to follow (including the poignant, and hilariously tumultuous ending) between two black trans sex workers, best friends who brave the rough streets each day – namely, the emotional train wreck of a diva Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez), who just finished up a 28-day prison sentence and looks positively gaw-juss dressed as a sexy slinky woman, and the statuesque and muscular Alexandra (Mya Taylor), she of the regretful momentary loose-lips regarding Sin-Dee’s drug-dealing pimp’s cheating ways while Sin-Dee was doing time that then leads to Sin-Dee’s ensuing alternately funny, outrageous and sad rampage, as well as a side story featuring the struggles of Armenian cabbie Razmik (Karren Karagulian), caught between supporting his wife and child while trying to hide his barely-contained obsession for a certain kind of street trade – namely, chicks with dicks (and therein linking the story back to Sin-Dee, with the smitten cabbie having learned his fave boy/girl is back on the street, determinedly tracks her down for the great donut shop finale where Razmik comes upon Sin-Dee confronting her skinny runt of an amusingly dirtbag pimp, who does his best to worm out of her charges of infidelity, just as Razmik’s horrified mother-in-law, who has been tailing him, suddenly shows up – all happening on Christmas Eve, no less!), Tangerine fit the bill perfectly for my lead-in to LA (not that I’m into chicks with dicks, or any street trade for that matter, but it’s a film that captures a milieu that isn’t hard to see when you like spending time wandering the streets of LA like I do when I visit).
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