Beautiful People

It is 1993 and England is a changing place. The impending World Cup qualifier with Holland is only going to end badly and immigration is back on the political agenda as refugees arrive from the former Yugoslavia, fleeing the Bosnian War. A group of people move in and around these events and find their lives impacted and ultimately changed by them.

With his incite into the story, Dizdar makes a worthy shot at a sort of Short Cuts ensemble piece that weaves several threads together in a way that ironically touches on the Bosnian war and British society. However, for all the credit it deserves for trying, this isn't a very successful attempt for several reasons. The overall sweep of the story works and it is interesting enough to carry it all along but it is in the specific stories where I wasn't feeling it. The major plot devices are always extreme and they prevented the story flowing and being as natural as I wanted it to be. This also limits the ability of the character to impact on me – something not helped by how many characters and threads there were crammed into less than two hours. I wanted it to be better than it was but these problems did knock it down a bit for me.

The ensemble cast are nearly all good and no fault can be laid at their feet. At the start the characters are basic but they gradually overcome this and produce solid turns despite the limited character development available to them within the material. To pick one or two out would be difficult but the young football hooligan (forget the actors name) does well, while the sadly passed Coleman is always worth a note.

Overall this is an interesting film that aims high but hits a bit lower. The material is engaging and the energy to it almost carries off the excessive and exaggerated plot devices needed to keep it moving. The wide view also limits the impact each character and story has but still just about works. Not brilliant then by any means but a good try from Dizdar and at least it is more interesting and original than the romantic comedies and Lock Stock rip-offs that British cinema was and is churning out.

In contemporary London, five stories with refugees from former Yugoslavia are presented in a chaotic and mixed way, some of them with points of contact. The best and funniest story is about a drugged hooligan who travels to Rotterdam with two addicted friends to watch a soccer game between Netherlands x England. After the game, when England lost it, in the airport, he is so drugged in heroin that he sleeps inside a box of international aid to Bosnia. The box is dropped by parachute in the front of the war, and our `hero' wakes-up in the middle of a battle. He meets a young boy, who becomes blind, and helps people in an improvised hospital of the United Nations before coming back home. There is the story of a cinematographer who gets a kind of syndrome due to the horrors he witnessed in the war, specially the amputation of a leg without any resources. There is another story about a fight between a Croat and a Serbian, beginning in a bus and ending in the hospital in London. There is a story of a raped young woman who gets pregnant. Her husband wants that her English doctor makes an abortion. By the other hand, the doctor is full of personal problems with his wife. There is a romance between a refugee from former Yugoslavia and a daughter of a conservator English politician. The way the stories are presented looks like a documentary, or the news on television, and is very different. The movie does not present clichés and has lots of English black humor. I myself loved it. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): `Beautiful People'

This film highlights some of the problems faced by former Yugoslav refugees trying to start a new life in Britain. There are some light hearted moments like when a Serb and a Croat who were neighbours in their former homeland fight with each other and end up next to each other in the hospital (highlighting the basis of the Yugoslav war). Some of the more common refugee problems are also highlighted (you'd have to watch to find out). There is hardly any intensity in the movie but the story is still rather well told.

"Beautiful People" spreads it's story of the effect of the Bosnian conflict on Brits and others thinly over a broad and varied cast of characters with the feel of a documentary in spite of considerable implausibility. Mostly shot in the UK sans any Hollywoodesque appointments, this film weaves several very short and loosely interconnected stories into it's sometimes harsh, sometimes humorous fabric. "Beautiful People" - which are scarce in this austere film - leaves little room for audience empathy but is replete with ironies. The film will play best with those who appreciate British cinema.

I love British movies - most of them, at least - and this one was no exception. It was on late night TV, and the mention of Charlotte Coleman's name amongst the cast convinced me to stay up to watch it. Most everything which could be said about it has been said.

For me, it left me with a lot to think about. It was not a stab at realism, but had a strong impact all the same. I quite enjoyed the somewhat chaotic, circular storytelling style, as the viewer is reacquainted again and again with some characters, as they stumble through their lives.

My favourite set-up was the hospital bed companion of the Serb and Croat - himself a Welshman who hates the English, and is in hospital having been blown up with an incendiary device he was buying - to blow up English property, no doubt. He's forever trying to stop the Serb and Croat from killing one another, completely oblivious that his own blind prejudice - whilst justifiable - is destructive, and mirrors their own.

A must-see for fans of British film.