Dirty Pretty Things : Loin de chez eux

A thoroughly engaging film which I would have no hesitation in recommending. Other reviewers have given away the major elements of the plot which may mean that you may find that it takes time to "cut to the chase" if you read the comments here before you see it. You are better off seeing this film "cold" knowing neither the plot nor the players. It does tend to get a bit goarey towards the end, but not without reason. A well written, superbly acted (especially by the two leads) and expertly directed work that makes you continue to believe that cinema can still be political and make important points without hitting you over the head with a blunt instrument. My only minor crib would be the accents which can be difficult to decipher or in Tatou's case slightly off (her character is supposed to be Turkish but the accent is more Eastern European).

`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' 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.

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.