Tangerine

    I remember stumbling on the movie Tangerine years ago. At that time, I had only watched about 20 minutes of it before giving up. To be honest, when I first attempted watching it, I thought the storyline was insane, I wasn't too fond of the acting, nor was I fond of how the film was shot. Looking back, I should've definitely given it more of a chance. I'm glad to have been to able to watch it the whole way through this time as I wouldn't have been able to appreciate the beauty and culture of this film otherwise. 

    The film was really funny althroughout. At first I didn't really understand the role of the cab driver. Having gotten to the end, I now know the weight of his role. The cab driver represents the many men out there who fetishize transgender women while trying to maintain their "normal", standard lifestyle. I found the scene where the cab driver pushed the prostitute out of his car after finding out she does not have a penis really disturbing. I really battled with feeling sympathy for the cab driver. Because on one hand, he is unable to be his true self because of societal standards (and he does lose everything at the end) but on the other, he is intentionally hurting his family and his behavior towards the prostitute really pushed any feelings of sympathy out of the window.

    Someone else mentioned this during Tuesday's class, but I also kept forgetting that the film was set on Christmas Eve. This is where I thought the idea of family came in to play as we had discussed from last class. While Alexandria and Sin-Dee had each other, the pimp, the white prostitute, and the cab driver were all alone. And with the shocking turn of events at the end where Sin-Dee finds out that Alexandria has also slepted with her fiance, they still manage to have love for each other. The scene where Alexandria took off her wig to give to Sin-Dee was really touching and even without much dialogue, it was pretty clear the significance of that act.