To celebrate Pride Month, MOVIES WITH MADELYN will spotlight a different LGBTQ+ film each week. Each film is a first-time viewing for me. One of the most fascinating paradoxes in modern life is the role of the iPhone in our lives. Its features are limitless and innovative, yet they’re in our lives so much that we don’t treat them like a big deal. I’m amazed that a device with such extraordinary capabilities is so easily consumed and accessible. The possibilities of what one can do with an iPhone are practically infinite, but we still label the iPhone as a layman’s tool. The everyman can kind of do whatever he wants to do with them— so Sean Baker used his iPhone 5 to make a feature-length, award-winning movie.
That was probably the heaviest buzz I had heard surrounding Tangerine upon its release. People were going nuts over the fact that this movie was shot entirely on an iPhone. Now the independent film circuit had a completely different meaning to its name: ground had been broken, Sean Baker made a film entirely from his phone, and now it was anyone’s game. Sometimes a film’s place in history can overshadow the quality of the film itself, and thank God that Tangerine is a really, really good movie. It’s essentially a madcap comedy about Sin-Dee Rella, a transgender sex worker, who has been released from jail only to find that her boyfriend and pimp, Chester, has been cheating on her with her coworker, Dinah. Meanwhile, Sin-Dee’s best friend, Alexandra (who is also a trans woman), is preparing a Christmas Eve concert in a club that she hopes will give her some admiration and respect. Sin-Dee’s and Alexandra’s plights will eventually intersect, and when they finally do, all hell breaks loose. So, does it matter at all that this movie was filmed with an iPhone? On the surface, it sounds like a pretty simple screwball plot, so why is it important that Tangerine in particular was the first to be shot entirely on an iPhone? Honestly, I can think of no better way it could’ve been shot. What makes Tangerine special is its authenticity, which trickles its way down to even the tool it was shot with. As a whole, this movie is so real and so unromantic that it wouldn’t make sense to have studio-grade cameras planted as the scenes played out. Watching Tangerine is an immersive view of the uneasy part of Los Angeles wherein it’s set— no holding back. What gives the most authenticity to Tangerine, however, is its casting of actual transgender people. It shouldn’t be so remarkable that a movie about transgender characters features actual transgender people, but here I am today, praising this movie for its (distressingly) unique decision to do so. Around two years have passed since this movie hit the scene, and such representation hasn’t been seen yet in a Hollywood picture (last month’s 3 Generations featured Elle Fanning playing a trans male, and Eddie Redmayne was nominated for an Oscar playing Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl). When I watch Tangerine, I see a depiction of the reality of characters with real life parallels. Even when acting in fictional roles, hearing actual transgender people talk about the struggles they face is much more resonant than a miscast cisgender actor doing the same thing. Hollywood seems doing better with racial representation, and appears to have learned from whitewashed financial blunder Ghost in the Shell that a lack of appropriate representation won’t really rake in the big bucks; but as far as gender identity representation, we aren’t quite there yet. That’s why Tangerine is still being lauded today. It was a small release, but it has a passionate fanbase in ways that 3 Generations and The Danish Girl will never have. The push for appropriate media representation, especially for minority groups, is always going to be going on; but with films like Tangerine, we get closer to the right direction.
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To celebrate Pride Month, MOVIES WITH MADELYN will spotlight a different LGBTQ+ film each week. Each film is a first-time viewing for me. I read Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt (later published as Carol) last summer. Though I enjoyed it enough, I didn’t understand why— aside from its social and historical significance, which is no small feat— people held it in such high regard. But a year has passed, I’m older, and I’ve finally gotten around to watching Carol, Todd Haynes’ film adaptation of Highsmith’s novel. I regret that it took an interpretation other than the original text to open my eyes to such a lovely story, but something must have happened in the translation from text to film that made me fall in love with it. Because, truly, Carol is a very visual film, heavily reliant on its quiet photography to express the longing the film almost bursts with. This is quite appropriate considering that our protagonist, Therese Belivet (a captivating Rooney Mara) is an aspiring photographer. We follow her as she begins a job at a department store, where she meets the entrancing Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett, in the role she was born for). Carol is buying a train-set for her daughter, Therese helps her with the order, and very soon young Therese realizes she is in love with Carol. What follows is a stunning love affair, one that must be hushed, reluctant to come out of hiding, full of painful yearning. In the middle of a messy divorce and custody battle, Carol takes much of the affair on the road, as a brief getaway, with Therese by her side. Even on the road there’s a quietness, but there’s a sort of excitement in this kind of clandestine love, especially before Carol and Therese explicitly make their feelings known to each other. Yes, Haynes perfectly bottles the startling potential energy which precedes a romance. Anyone who has ever been in love knows this feeling, and here it’s uncanny, it’s scintillating. We see this love and its buildup through Therese’s photographic perspective. Carol was shot with super 16 mm film, which gives the film a dreamy warmth. It also captures the perceptiveness one gains when they’re in the presence of someone they love very much—when Carol and Therese go out for the first time, the camera brilliantly lets go of its reins and focuses on Carol’s lips, the rush of a car moving, Carol’s hands. It’s a sort of blur that expresses love’s excitement and beauty in both the minutely detailed and abstractly conceptual, simultaneously. I adored it.
There’s a lot Therese and Carol have to figure out: will Carol gain custody of her daughter? Will Carol’s husband use Therese against her? And what about Therese and her correspondence with the men in her life— can that simply blow over? These are deftly executed driving points in the plot, but the thing that stuck with me most about this movie is love, love, love, in its excitement, its danger, and, ultimately, its uniquely human bliss. |
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