Room to Rent (2000)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Director:

Khalid Al-Haggar

Writers:

Khalid Al-Haggar (writer)
Amanda McKenzie Stuart (writer)

Release Date:

22 June 2001 (UK)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

Ali wants to be loved, inspired - and to belong. But first he needs a... [Room To Rent]

Plot:

Ali is a young Egyptian screenwriter determined to succeed in London, where he has been a student. He loves the artistic and political freedom...

Plot Keywords:

Reincarnation | Marilyn Monroe | Green Card | London England | Illegal Immigrant

Awards:

6 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Flaminia Cinque	...	Margreta
Saïd Taghmaoui	...	Ali
Karim Belkhadra	...	Ahmed
Maureen O'Farrell	...	Belly Dancer
Rupert Graves	...	Mark
Clémentine Célarié	...	Vivienne
Nayef Rashed	...	Naief
Badia Obaid	...	Ali's Mother
Ramadan Nahyar	...	Ali's Sister
Adam El Hagar	...	Ali's Brother
Sahar Gadel-Kareem	...	Ali's Young Sister
Louis Hammond	...	Pedro
Anna Massey	...	Sarah Stevenson
Shobu Kapoor	...	Home Office Official
Chris Langham	...	Mr. Paul

Also Known As:

Room to Rent (France)

Runtime:

Spain:98 min | UK:95 min

Country:

France | UK

Language:

English | Arabic | French | Spanish

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

South Korea:15 | Australia:M | France:U | Spain:7 | UK:15

Filming Locations:

London, England, UK

Company:

Arts Council of England

Goofs:

Boom mic visible: A boom mic falls into the shot in a scene near the end, when Ali and Sarah are sitting on the bed together.

Movie Connections:

References La dolce vita (1960)

Unique film, uneven in tone but plot goes off at some original tangents.

Very British film comedy-romance-drama about immigrants trying to 'make it' in Britian. In the same way that 'My Beautiful Launderette' was hard to categorise as straight romance or straight comedy, so is this, but perhaps it lacks the political bite of the earlier film. However it does feature a likeable lead performance and a plot with enough inertia to keep thickening.

The rather linear and limited appearance of Juliette Lewis is a bit of a mystery. I would suggest she was placed in the film, in the same way that 'Four Weddings And a Funeral' wanted an American actress in order to boost box-office. The trouble is: Juliette Lewis has spoken at length about her enjoyment of the script and how seriously she took the role. Yet her role seems very slight and a little bit of a blind alley. If the Mariyln Monroe impersonator looked and sounded little like Marilyn off-stage (perhaps with a Birmingham, England accent) it would have made more sense and the lead character's love of her would have made his character even more sweetly innocent and endearing.

The last half hour of the film seems to have come from an entirely different script, more fantastical and yet more serious at the same time. Perhaps this is the influence of the literary genre, magical-realism but regardless, it does make for a film that goes somewhere you weren't expecting and how often can you say that about a film?