The most shocking thing about Tangerine-currently being touted as one of the best films of 2015-is just how conventional it feels. Once you get past the novelty of a film providing some representation of an oft-marginalised group plus the iPhone aesthetics you realise that Tangerine is just another 'crazy day in LA'. And sadly it isn't one that's particularly dramatic or even funny. Which isn't to say the film is bad, simply underwhelming and leads one to wonder exactly what the fuss is about.
But to the film itself. The film is centred on Sin Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor), two trans-women and prostitutes whose friendship is very much the emotional core of the film. Sin Dee has just finished a brief stint in jail only to discover that Chester, her boyfriend and pimp, has been cheating on her with a 'fish' (a cisgender female). So they embark on a haphazard voyage across LA to track down the fish and confront Chester. Meanwhile Alexandra is focused on singing at a local club and trying to encourage her friends to come.
What follows feels like a rather bog-standard succession of encounters among the denizens of Los Angeles mostly other transgender people until Sin Dee finally finds her fish. The problem being that while most films would use each scene to construct a comic set-piece or flesh out its characters to Tangerine they're merely stepping stones. Each new character is a chance for Sin Dee to demonstrate her obnoxiousness and Alexandra her exasperation. There are no surprises, Sin Dee finds the woman and drags her across town, stretching out suspension of disbelief in the process, before at least trying to reconcile things with Alexandra.
Alexandra's show is the tragic peak of her character. Something she's been putting considerable time and effort into an in the end is just another seedy LA bar that she had to pay to sing at. It's a small, sad performance only attended by a late Sin Dee and the fish she's literally dragged into the situation. To Tangerine's credit there's no pat moment of reconciliation, no revelatory turn that will redeem these characters of their bad behavior. This is a film about loud, rude angry people in a world where the only thing they have of value is their own bodies. It would be disingenuous to suggest some greater change or arc is going to come across two people who exist as the flotsam of an abusive industry.
The friendship between Sin Dee and Alexandra is the film's strongest quality. Two people with only each other whose loyalty is tested by Sin Dee's temper and Alexandra's aspirations. Alexandra is definitely the better characterised of the two, just as outspoken as Sin Dee and quick to anger but tempered with a desire to do better. She's past being sick of her life as a prostitute and has little time for Sin Dee's antics but is still ashamed to disappoint her.
The film also takes time out for a subplot about Razmik (Karren Karagulian), an Armenian cabdriver with an interest in Sin Dee and Alexandra, unbeknownst to his wife and child. Early scenes of Ramik picking up passengers, all with their own comic moments to experience, feel inorganic to the actions of Sin Dee and Alexandra. And while his story does eventually payoff it doesn't stop the character feeling like a distraction from the main action.
Eventually the disparate characters of Sin Dee, Alexandra, Chester and Razmik come together for a farcical showdown at a local donut shop. While the scene does bring the film to some sense of a climx there's little in the way of drama in a scene about five or so people yelling at each other. Secrets are revealed and everyone hurls verbal abuse at each other until they can no longer stand it. Funny yes, but without any kind of dramatic context to make it meaningful.
Tangerine is an exceptional film, but it's exceptional only for its courage and the circumstances which brought it about. The fact that it was shot on an iPhone certainly gives it a unique look but one devoid of the suspense, amusement or engagement we get from clever uses of cinematography and editing. I am glad that Tangerine exists and that contemporary culture is recognising transgender people as a part of our society's fabric but this is not a film I'll be returning to soon.
Monday, 14 December 2015
Saturday, 5 December 2015
The Crimson Peak of the Winter's Offerings
This is one I came to rather late which believe me I regret now. October was a rather crowded month for releases, money needed to be prioritised and honestly at the time I thought that the English-Language debut of Yorgos Lanthimos needed far more support than a heavily marketed new film from a (relatively) more established director. Well shows what I know as Crimson Peak has long-since be labelled as another of Del Toro's under-performers, even as its gross reached $72 million worldwide. A great shame because it really does stand alongside Hellboy 2 and Pan's Labyrinth as one of his best films to date.
The reason for Crimson Peak's success as a film is the same reason behind every successful genre film these days which is a knowing sense of self. Despite all the ghosts and strange apparitions this is old school, Gothic melodrama that wears its skin transparently yet 100% embraces what it it. A lavish, elaborately staged, camping-performed romance starring a host of characters that are, bizzarely, both archetypal and colourfully realised.
The films stars Mia Wasikowska, and really is there any better actor to cast as an ethereal symbol of innocence?, as Edith Cushing. Edith is the daughter of a self-made businessman from Buffalo NY and an aspiring author of Gothic melodrama. So it makes perfect sense when she falls for the ultimate Byronic heroin Tom Hiddleston's Sir Thomas Sharpe. Sharpe is Baronet with his fortune exhausted and his estate literally crumbling around him and Hiddleston's performance sells the hell out of this. He exudes both villainy and weakness, constantly being outclassed by those around him. The fact that you never really notice how much the film rushed the courtship of Edith and Thomas is a testament to the chaste chemistry the two actors possess. Their love is one of gentle companionship in contrast to what comes later.
When Edith, who is already haunted by the ghosts of family tragedy, loses her father to murder she runs away with Thomas to Allerdale Hall, his estate where the house is falling both in disrepair and being swallowed by the disused clay mines beneath it. Del Toro's set design is always a thing of art and Allerdale Hall is his masterpiece, a traditional English manor that manages to be both vast and claustrophobic. A creature alive, but visibly dying, with constantly-moving parts seen only at the fringes of it's broken husk. Each room and level is so distinct in its design that they feel like characters unto themselves. From the dank, industrial clay vats in the basement to the narrow, spiked hallways and the rotten, winding stairwell.
Allerdale is also residence to Thomas's sister Lucille, a detached creature fixated only on her brother and the grim realities of her life. Jessica Chastain has had a great run this year playing the down-to-earth rationalist among larger, more colourful characters. In Lucille though she gets to really let loose as a creature holding all her madness deep inside her. Like Annie Wilkes she is an unstable character made all the more chilling by how composed and calm she seems on the outside. When she finally does let loose it is to glorious effect, a sharp, terrifying performance that proves her more monstrous than any ghost or ghoul.
That's another thing about the film which has recurred throughout Del Toro's work and not always to positive effect. Del Toro has always been enamored of the supernatural and his films always find the true horror in everyday humans. The unfortunate result is that the more ghostly sequences, heavily featured in Crimson Peak's marketing, never really achieve the tense level of horror associated with films like The Haunting or Psycho. There are jump scares aplenty but they feel cheap and lacking in a more lingering impact. It's not so much the design of the ghosts, which admittedly are shown so explicitly that the horror soon wears thin. It's more to do with the build up of their arrival and how quickly they tranform, in true Del Toro style, from a spectre of torment to a benevolent ally.
There are other problems to be sure. It may be baggage from his Sons of Anarchy days but Charlie Hunnam really doesn't convince as a man of the 19th Century. Too much time is spent teasing him as Edith's rightful companion in what is supposed to be a feminist revision of that kind of trope. The violence is elaborate and cartoonish, which suits the film right up until the end when Edith herself is gravely injured. It may seem like a nitpick but to be able to slam her ribs into a balcony and walk away with only a sprain feels like a stretch.
Perhaps it's part of Peak's charm that it seems so vastly divorced from reality, like Del Toro's previous work Pacific Rim, it feels like a cartoon made with real actors. To the great directors credit this never lessens the experience, the sincerity one feels in the courtship of Edith and Thomas, her terror at the ghosts of Allerdale and the shock at discovering the dark secrets of Allerdale Hall resonate powerfully. The film draws from the conventions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights but unlike it's predecessors has no time for happy resolutions. Edith won't leave Allerdale with the true man of her dreams and certainly not without the scars to prove she was there. If anything Crimson Peak is the Gothic romance you'll wish you read in school.
The reason for Crimson Peak's success as a film is the same reason behind every successful genre film these days which is a knowing sense of self. Despite all the ghosts and strange apparitions this is old school, Gothic melodrama that wears its skin transparently yet 100% embraces what it it. A lavish, elaborately staged, camping-performed romance starring a host of characters that are, bizzarely, both archetypal and colourfully realised.
The films stars Mia Wasikowska, and really is there any better actor to cast as an ethereal symbol of innocence?, as Edith Cushing. Edith is the daughter of a self-made businessman from Buffalo NY and an aspiring author of Gothic melodrama. So it makes perfect sense when she falls for the ultimate Byronic heroin Tom Hiddleston's Sir Thomas Sharpe. Sharpe is Baronet with his fortune exhausted and his estate literally crumbling around him and Hiddleston's performance sells the hell out of this. He exudes both villainy and weakness, constantly being outclassed by those around him. The fact that you never really notice how much the film rushed the courtship of Edith and Thomas is a testament to the chaste chemistry the two actors possess. Their love is one of gentle companionship in contrast to what comes later.
When Edith, who is already haunted by the ghosts of family tragedy, loses her father to murder she runs away with Thomas to Allerdale Hall, his estate where the house is falling both in disrepair and being swallowed by the disused clay mines beneath it. Del Toro's set design is always a thing of art and Allerdale Hall is his masterpiece, a traditional English manor that manages to be both vast and claustrophobic. A creature alive, but visibly dying, with constantly-moving parts seen only at the fringes of it's broken husk. Each room and level is so distinct in its design that they feel like characters unto themselves. From the dank, industrial clay vats in the basement to the narrow, spiked hallways and the rotten, winding stairwell.
Allerdale is also residence to Thomas's sister Lucille, a detached creature fixated only on her brother and the grim realities of her life. Jessica Chastain has had a great run this year playing the down-to-earth rationalist among larger, more colourful characters. In Lucille though she gets to really let loose as a creature holding all her madness deep inside her. Like Annie Wilkes she is an unstable character made all the more chilling by how composed and calm she seems on the outside. When she finally does let loose it is to glorious effect, a sharp, terrifying performance that proves her more monstrous than any ghost or ghoul.
That's another thing about the film which has recurred throughout Del Toro's work and not always to positive effect. Del Toro has always been enamored of the supernatural and his films always find the true horror in everyday humans. The unfortunate result is that the more ghostly sequences, heavily featured in Crimson Peak's marketing, never really achieve the tense level of horror associated with films like The Haunting or Psycho. There are jump scares aplenty but they feel cheap and lacking in a more lingering impact. It's not so much the design of the ghosts, which admittedly are shown so explicitly that the horror soon wears thin. It's more to do with the build up of their arrival and how quickly they tranform, in true Del Toro style, from a spectre of torment to a benevolent ally.
There are other problems to be sure. It may be baggage from his Sons of Anarchy days but Charlie Hunnam really doesn't convince as a man of the 19th Century. Too much time is spent teasing him as Edith's rightful companion in what is supposed to be a feminist revision of that kind of trope. The violence is elaborate and cartoonish, which suits the film right up until the end when Edith herself is gravely injured. It may seem like a nitpick but to be able to slam her ribs into a balcony and walk away with only a sprain feels like a stretch.
Perhaps it's part of Peak's charm that it seems so vastly divorced from reality, like Del Toro's previous work Pacific Rim, it feels like a cartoon made with real actors. To the great directors credit this never lessens the experience, the sincerity one feels in the courtship of Edith and Thomas, her terror at the ghosts of Allerdale and the shock at discovering the dark secrets of Allerdale Hall resonate powerfully. The film draws from the conventions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights but unlike it's predecessors has no time for happy resolutions. Edith won't leave Allerdale with the true man of her dreams and certainly not without the scars to prove she was there. If anything Crimson Peak is the Gothic romance you'll wish you read in school.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)