Dirty Pretty Things

Having enjoyed watching Audrey Tautou in "Amelie," I decided to give this a look. I've done that in several other of her films since then, too, and always with the same result: the films stink. I guess she peaked with "Amelie."

Like others, I also got suckered in on the reviews which said this was "a sensational thriller.....gripping suspense." Yeah, right. I never pay attention to that nonsense anymore. Movies like this taught me to disregard any "hype."

Folks, this is very little suspense in this film. I kept waiting and waiting for it. The only thing that kept me interested were Audrey's big beautiful eyes and Chiwtel Ejiofor's interesting character "Okwe." It's not a bad film; just not as good as advertised which makes the viewer disappointed.

An interesting twist in this film was having people of "color" playing Caucasian roles. Wow, that's a switch from the old classic-era days. It also was Tautou's first English-speaking role, and she was fine with that. (She's French.)

The story is simply of how Britain blackmailed some immigrants into donating body parts, such as a kidney, to give them status so they wouldn't be deported. I agree: if that really happened, it's outrageous.

Overall, I would rate it as "fair," and maybe give it a sixth star for the nice colors in here and the fact that it's also low on profanity. You could do a whole lot worse but just don't expect a suspenseful film, either.

Who on earth wrote the last commentary?

While I might agree that the movie appears 'preachy' compared with typical Hollywood crap which is incapable of analysis, this movie portrays non-Americans in a non-American world. It is subtle, entertaining, excels with its dark humor, and is an accurate portrayal of what immigrants suffer - not only in London, but around the globe.

What on earth prompted the terrorist comment also? Sheesh.

I suggest that this movie deserves deeper reflection, is not preachy like a Michael Moore, and goes about its business subtly and intelligently. A pleasure to watch.

`Dirty Pretty Things', Stephen Frears' latest film played last year in Europe, but the North American opportunity to see it only came yesterday. Much buzz, fortunately all merited, preceded it: an amazing Nigerian actor, Chiwetel Ejiofor, already acclaimed for his stage performances, makes his big-screen debut, while Audrey Tatou, the impossibly wide-eyed kook from 2001's `Amelie', tackles her first English-language movie role.

Frears' film details the story of those faceless, nameless human beings of a variety of ethnicities, who, for a multitude of reasons--all marked by desperation--sneak into England. Then, until they wangle a way of getting a British passport, they lead the hunted, humiliating lives of the illegal immigrant. The Nigerian Okwe is one such person: a pathologist in his home country, he is reduced to driving cabs by day and moonlighting as the sole front-desk worker in a London hotel by night. During the day, he grabs a couple of hours of sleep on the couch of a Turkish co-worker, a hotel maid named Senay, played by Audrey Tatou. As in most hotels in these straitened times, the night staff deals with the usual sordid emergencies that arise when the nocturnal creatures of the city are on the prowl. Prostitution and drugs are routine phenomena, but when he finds a human heart clogging a toilet in one of the rooms, Okwe realizes that something far more sinister is afoot.

For the illegal immigrants portrayed in the film, it is an ongoing struggle to hold onto some semblance of integrity, humanity, and dignity, as the Society around them exploits and hounds them mercilessly, safe in the knowledge that nothing would be reported to the authorities. Each character makes more compromises and greater sacrifices, all for freedom, which as the tagline of the film sums up, comes at a price. Senay is a hair's breadth away from getting her residency papers, when she runs afoul of the law and has to go on the lam to avoid deportation. Okwe, the cause of her problems, feels duty-bound to see that she remains safe. But by persisting in his efforts to unravel the mystery of the heart in the toilet, he becomes increasingly exposed to those who would harm him and Senay.

Interestingly, though this film is set in London, none of the main characters is English: there's Juliette, an ironically-named feisty West Indian hooker who plies her trade in the hotel; Ivan, the Russian doorman; Senor Juan or `Sneaky', another hotel employee who makes use of the hotel for his own money-making schemes; Gou Yi, a Chinese night porter in a morgue; a motley collection of Somali, Nigerian, and Kenyan men who work at the cab company, and the South Asian owner of a sweatshop. Even the Immigration inspectors who make the dreaded surprise checks for illegal aliens are of color, but they have been elevated into a privileged stratum of society by their passports. These people alternately help each other and prey on each other for another person's frailty is always a source of profit; while a person with knowledge of one's past is someone to be feared. The London we see through their eyes is unrecognizable--squalid, begrimed, crowded, sleazy, perilous--not at all the gleaming promised land of immigrant fantasies.

Part anthropological documentary, part thriller, and part tentative, unlikely love story, this film keeps one riveted throughout. The unfortunates in the film live by their wits and survive by hanging on to their senses of humor. But as one degrading or dehumanizing experience piles itself atop another, you see them question the worth of the Holy Grail that is the British passport. However as there is no going back, they are forced to continue. Every now and then, they find it in themselves to hit back, making you want to applaud their diffident, costly bravery.

The film belongs to the lead pair. Ejiofor, with his expressive dark eyes and handsome face, registers every affront to his humanity; he inhabits the character of Okwe completely and takes us along on the bleak, dangerous journey that Okwe is forced into. Likewise, Tatou breaks our hearts as she is exploited time and again; she is an actress of such luminous transparency and vulnerability that one empathizes with every tribulation of Senay's. This is a far more dramatically demanding role than `Amelie' and Tatou is up to its challenges. Sergi Lopez, who's star-making turn in the French film `With A Friend like Harry' did not go unnoticed in North America, has created a charming whisky-guzzling monster in Senor Juan. Juan is the ultimate amoral opportunist, a Brylcreemed, Mercedes-driving vulture, and Lopez does not shy away from showing himself at his worst. Benedict Wong and Sophie Okonedo are first-rate, too, as the philosophical chess-playing morgue-worker buddy of Okwe and Juliette the rebellious prostitute respectively.

`Dirty Pretty Things', brilliantly written by Steve Knight, maintains its unpredictability right up to its surprise ending. Stephen Frears--no stranger to the seamy side of human nature (`My Beautiful Launderette', `Dangerous Liaisons', `The Grifters' being cases in point)--has crafted the film with delicacy and intelligence. A lesser director might have turned it into a sentimental morass, but Frears, with an unerring sense for a good story, abstains from making his characters too noble, too courageous, or too upstanding, rendering them altogether human and memorable.

"Dirty Pretty Things," a film directed by Stephen Frears is not quite a thriller, romance or a drama, but it does manage to fit all three successfully.

An illegal immigrant in London (Chiwetel Ejiofor), working a day job as a cab driver and a hotel clerk in the Baltic Hotel at nights, discovers a human heart stuck in the bottom of a hotel room toilet one night and worries about what goes on behind the closed doors of his hotel. In the meantime, he develops a friendship with an immigrant woman from Turkey (Audrey Tatou ) who is also just trying to get by first as a maid in the hotel, then, as a seamstress in a sweatshop.

Acting by everybody, especially by two leads is wonderful. I am so glad to see Tatou in the part very different from her Amelie. The story is gripping; and we see London the way we have not seen it before and did not even know that London exists.

An engrossing human drama, stylish noir, social commentary, lives of immigrants, characters study - with the characters deep, human, and very real. No cheap pulling the strings, no manipulation. As a result -one of the best films of the last year.

And that ending.... Fans of "Lost in Translation" - watch "Dirty Pretty Things", and then we'll talk about what the good ending is.

Stephen Frears is good at growing roses in unpromising surroundings, `My Beautiful Laundrette' being a good example. Here he tells the almost uplifting tale of Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a Nigerian doctor who has become an illegal immigrant to Britain, and his chaste relationship with a young virginal Turkish woman Senay (Audrey Tautou) whose aim is to join her sister in New York, where the policemen are on white horses and good jobs can be had for the asking . At the start of the film Okwe and Senjay are both working in the Baltic, an upmarket London hotel, he as the night desk clerk and she as a maid, sharing (by rotation) a tiny flat and doing their best to avoid the immigration police. Then one night Okwe discovers that the toilet of Room 510 is blocked with a human heart, and it seems that Sneaky the night manager who unaccountably drives a new Mercedes (Sergi Lopez) is deeply involved. Unfortunately he can't very well go to the cops, and Sneaky, when he finds out about Okwe's medical skills, tries to recruit him into the racket, which, without giving the game away, involves the sale of human organs. The squeamish are advised, by the way, to avert their eyes when the scalpels come out – even properly conducted surgery can be a bloody business.

The film is very much about the plight of immigrants, especially illegal ones, to richer countries, where they slot in to all those menial low paid jobs the citizens of those countries don't want to do. In one of the few really comic moments of the film the entire workforce of a clothing sweatshop vanish from the premises with well-practiced haste as immigration officials approach the premises. Okwe makes a little speech late in the move about he and his fellow illegals doing all that stuff you don't notice unless it's not done, like cleaning and rubbish disposal, but Frears refrains from preaching, for the most part. What he has done is to present their plight in a compassionate manner and evoked the atmosphere of fear and despair that surrounds them.

A film like this requires good acting and Chiwetel Ejiofor, a Londoner with Nigerian parents, is excellent as Owke the doctor turned night clerk. Owke maintains his dignity and the audience's sympathy throughout. He has been to New York, in fact has worked there as a doctor, but he does not try to shatter Senay's dream of the Promised Land. Audrey Tautou is typecast as a young innocent (`Amelie' and `The Spanish Apartment') and it's not hard to see her as a Turkish virgin, but she here handles the maturing of her character very adroitly. I also liked Sergi Lopez's Sneaky, who was just nasty enough when it would have been easy to descend into caricature. Lopez certainly is versatile; he made a plausible lover in `L' Liasion Pornographique' and a very believable villain in `Harry, He's Here to Help'.

Above all, Frears has evoked the atmosphere of the illegal immigrant sub-culture in an honest fashion. It may be that the opening up of the labour markets of Western Europe with the enlargement of the European Union will squeeze out the illegal ones – there will be fewer jobs for them, even of the most menial kind. The trade that Frears exposes may well get worse.