Treat Yourself to ‘Tangerine’

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It’s Christmas Eve in Tinseltown and Sin-Dee (newcomer Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is back on the block. Upon hearing that her pimp boyfriend (James Ransone, STARLET, “Generation Kill”) hasn’t been faithful during the 28 days she was locked up, the sex worker and her best friend, Alexandra (newcomer Mya Taylor), embark on a mission to get to the bottom of the scandalous rumor. Their rip-roaring odyssey leads them through various subcultures of Los Angeles, including an Armenian family dealing with their own repercussions of infidelity.

The premise of Tangerine grew out of the in-depth conversations director Sean Baker and co-screenwriter Chris Bergoch had with Taylor and Rodriguez. Rodriguez plays Sin-Dee, a trans sex worker who has just been released from a short prison stint; Taylor plays Alexandra, an aspiring singer and Sin-Dee’s best friend. She, too, is a trans sex worker. Upon being released from prison, Sin-Dee learns that her boyfriend and pimp, Chester (James Ransome), has been cheating on her with a woman who is Cisgender female. The genesis of this narrative was borrowed from real life, as Baker explained. “Kiki told us a story she’d heard about a girl, a transgender sex worker, who found out that her boyfriend was actually sleeping with a Cisgender female. She was so upset that she wanted to actually find this girl and force a confrontation between herself, the girl, and the boyfriend. And it was something that struck me as quite dramatic. It was a launching point for us because it’s immediate drama that would take us on a journey.”

The film – which takes place on Christmas Eve – then begins following Sin-Dee and Alexandra as they go their separate ways. For Sin-Dee, the day becomes about exactly one thing: exacting vengeance upon the girl whom Chester has cheated on her with, as well as confronting Chester himself. However, a third storyline is introduced early on: that of an Armenian cab driver, Ramzik (Karren Karagulian), whose link to the girls is not immediately known. Karagulian has been in all of Baker’s films, and the two have a strong working relationship. “Karren is an amazing actor. There’s a very large Armenian community here in Los Angeles and when I told Karren I was making this film, we started discussing how we could incorporate an Armenian subplot. We ended up compiling a cast full of Armenian stars, these classic actors from the Armenian film world.” Those stars play the members of Ramzik’s family. For Karagulian, the bond with Baker is due, in no small part, to how Baker allows Karagulian to trust his instincts. “Sean always allows me to bring my own qualities to the character,” Karagulian explained. “Throughout the years we have developed a lot of mutual trust and I think as a result we are often on the same page.”

As we spend more time with Ramzik, the connection between him and the women becomes clear: Ramzik is one of their most devoted patrons. “Razmik is a family man with a clear understanding of the responsibilities that come with it but he is also living a double life,” Karagulian explained. “He has discovered a personal and natural desire that is not widely accepted within today’s social norms, especially if one has a wife and child. It is also a life style that would be violently shunned in his homeland. So he has found himself trapped between two worlds and forced to live a secret life.”

While Baker and Bergoch were writing, the decision to humanize Ramzik before revealing his secret sexual predilection was a crucial storytelling decision. “It’s important to allow the audience to become connected to a character during their everyday routine, something that everybody can identify with,” Chris Bergoch explains. Baker adds, “I wanted to show the mundane parts of everybody’s life before getting to the fireworks.”

Ramzik’s “payoff” comes in a touching scene where he has a sexual encounter with Alexandra in a car wash – a scene that demonstrates the intimacy and shared history between the two characters. “Alexandra is quite a professional and knows what she’s doing, she is able to make not only Razmik but also the audience believe that this is more than just a business transaction,” Baker explained. “But that’s part of being a sex worker. But there’s another way of looking at it. There’s a lot of loneliness on the streets of Los Angeles and I wanted to show that there was history between the two – even if just a business history, still, there was a comfort level between them.”

While Alexandra is having her encounter with Ramzik, Sin-Dee ends up finding Dinah (Mickey O’Hagan), the woman whom Chester cheated on Sin-Dee with. Sin-Dee physically assaults Dinah and essentially abducts her, with the purpose of taking her to Chester and confronting him. For Baker, the intensity of the scene was important to convey. “We knew from the beginning that we were going to approach that scene aggressively. It’s violent, it’s dangerous, and we wanted to capture that. It’s a balancing act – we wanted to retain the audience’s sympathy for Sin-Dee, but at the same time we wanted to stay realistic. I wanted to see how far we could actually take things without losing the audience.”

However, Sin-Dee and Dinah’s first stop is not Chester; it’s a club that Alexandra is singing in that night. It makes for a striking counterpoint, Sin-Dee and her captive sitting quietly in a nightclub as Alexandra signs quiet songs to a mostly empty room. It’s in this scene that the film dramatically shifts from a tone of edginess and aggression to one of beauty and tranquility, if only for a moment. “When we got to that scene, it almost becomes surreal,” Baker explained. “We’re almost inside the head of Alexandra during that entire scene. You know, the lighting changes, the mood changes, the composition change, and suddenly we’re seeing Alexandra very much the way she wants to be presented on stage and in the spotlight. We took that approach because you know; we wanted to find the calm in the chaos. Also, this is our way of allowing Mya to show the audience this is one her talents. She’s an amazing actress, but she’s also a singer. So when Chris and I were initially writing this film, she said she wanted to perform in it.”

For Taylor, the performance came naturally. “Shooting that scene was actually very fun, because I was in my own element. I’m sitting on stage in this red dress and I’m singing this song and it was like a natural high, I was just floating on a cloud, because I was so excited. Because the song was slow and soft like a lullaby, it took me back to a special place, and then Alexandra looks out and sees Sin-Dee sitting there. So seeing her there while I was singing, it was heartwarming.”

The heartwarming moment is the eye of the storm, however – shortly thereafter, Sin-Dee, Alexandra, and Dinah will end up in a confrontation with Chester in a local donut shop. To make matters worse, Ramzik and his family members become embroiled in the conversation, which becomes the culmination of the film’s many conflicts. Ransone recalled how shooting the chaotic scene was itself a chaotic experience. “Our location was a donut shop on Santa Monica Boulevard that wasn’t locked off, so customers would come in during the takes. There were a lot of sketchy Hollywood meth-heads lurking in and out of that place. There are so many little segments in that scene to piece together. The funniest thing was, it was Golden Globes night, and the Globes were being handed out literally five blocks away.”

Baker explains, “Chris and I wanted the film to come full circle… with the climax happening where the story begins. For me, nothing can be as exhilarating as a convergence of adversarial characters in a single location.  I have personally witnessed conflicts go down in Donut Time and because of the shop’s tight quarters, the drama is escalated. I knew it would be an exercise in controlled chaos and before the story was even broken, we knew this scene would be our climax.”

Tangerine opens today at The Kendall Square Cinema.