Dirty Pretty Things

"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.

`Dirty Pretty Things' is a thriller interrupted by a love story. The immigrant Brit working class is sometimes depicted by this film's director Stephen Frears (`My Beautiful Laundrette'); the native Brits are often championed by Mike Leigh (`Secrets and Lies'). In both cases, the kitchen sink realism does not fail to wake up middle-class Anglophiles like me.

Nigerian doctor Okwe hides in London behind 2 jobs as cabbie and night porter. He lives with, but does not sleep with, Turkish chambermaid Senay (played by `Amelie's' Audrey Tautou). Though they both hide from immigration officials, they cannot hide from their love. Okwe remains loyal to his Nigerian wife and daughter, and Senay has enough surviving to do to keep herself from Okwe.

After he finds a human heart in a hotel room, his own heart is changed forever. He becomes aware of low-life trafficking in organs and aware that as a doctor he could relieve many pains by helping the transplant operations. When the bloody business hits home, Frears lets us suffer with Okwe while he decides if his conventional morality can adjust to the underworld's impossible demands. The decision is not easy because his boss, Sneaky (the talented Sergi Lopez from `With a Friend like Harry'), regales him with the sophistry that crime like this is good for everyone involved (for instance, a doctor performing an operation rather than letting a hack do damage).

My worldly-wise companion and I debated Okwe's dilemma without a firm conclusion about the ethics of this end justifying the means. Frears caught us in the middle-class complacency of professionals who easily trip to London not even thinking about the workers who will attend to us--those shadow people we will never see, the disenfranchised a heartbeat away from jail or deportation. As for their love lives, who has time?

The screenwriter, Steven Knight, created the original Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? `Dirty' is leagues away from that fantasy game show, but then again the immigrants of this film are just as much moved by the slim chance of finding a home somewhere in the world.

It's the love story between Okwe and Senay that entrances me. I can't remember when I was so pleased by seeing the power of mutual respect turning into love and impossibility as I have been here. Of course, the consummate acting is a big help (You'll completely forget airhead Amelie when you see Tautou out of Paris and in the streets of London).

`Dirty Pretty Things' is an example of excellent filmmaking art without artifice.

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.

First off I want to say that I'm not going to write about neither the plot nor the contents of this film, while it's rather unnecessary.

The best way to describe "Dirty pretty things", is in my opinion, that it is like a beautiful poem. It flows easily and because of the fact that the cast are such good actors/actresses, almost every scene in the film affects you in some way.

This is certainly not another Hollywood flick, because of the fact that it is so realistic. At times you actually forget that you are watching a film.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, Audrey Tautou, Sergi López and the rest of the brilliant cast were new to me but I am going to keep following their careers, as I am hopeful that they will rise and get recognized for the great actors that they are.

I strongly recommend this film, for it is most certainly like a breath of fresh air in the otherwise monotonous movie jungle...

I easily give this film a 9 out of 10.

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.