Featured Image Credit: Magnolia Pictures
Topics: LGBTQ, iPhone, Netflix, Film and TV
Michael Slavin
Filmmaking is such an impressive art that I am amazed at what directors can achieve with scores of the world’s most expensive cameras.
So, what is even more impressive than that is when a filmmaker can produce something truly memorable with an iPhone.
When it comes to the best in the world, they could be filming you on anything and it would come out amazing – and that is the case for one of Netflix’s most underrated films.
Check out the trailer here and see what I mean:
The film is Tangerine and features a transgender sex worker who is on a rampage through Hollywood to get revenge on the pimp who broke her heart.
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Immediately, I’m in.
Tangerine boasts a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score of 96%, despite Director Sean Baker shooting the film entirely on iPhone 5s, with an $8 app and a lens attached to the phone.
Shot on the streets of LA, the movie had a budget of just $100,000 – a tiny amount compared to big studios films that would pay an actor that for a two minute cameo.
This film is amongst a series of movies that we are revisiting during Pride month to celebrate LGBTQ+ stories, with Tangerine being the first movie to ever have producers support an Oscars campaign for an openly transgender actress.
This happened for both the lead actors in the film, Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor.
Most of Baker's workers focuses on the lives of sex workers, with his newest film focused on the topic, Anora, winning this year's Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Amongst this though is the importance of LGBTQ+ films who don’t just focus on that aspect of the characters’ identities.
One review of the film by Kristen Yoonsoo Kim for Complex said: “At its core, this is a hilarious movie; it just happens to star two transgender women as the lead. That alone is worthy of note.”
Mark Kermode gave the film four stars in his review for The Guardian, saying: “Fired by zesty performances that crackle and burn with energy, Tangerine is a bittersweet affair underpinned by a winning sense of empathy and affection.
“Amid the rank artificiality of LA, there is real tenderness and between these characters a camaraderie that takes the harsher edges off their often bleak circumstances.
“Rodriguez and Taylor are a terrific double act, their on-screen chemistry providing both laugh-out-loud comedy and moving melancholia.”
This is a view agreed on by fans who’ve watched the film, as best summed up by this review on Letterboxd: “God that last shot was so beautiful this movie really f*cks.”