A Guerra dos Outros

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'

Beautiful People is an easy watch jet black comedy.Heroin addiction and extreme racism are given an improbable humorous edge in a way that you don't expect. The film has some startling switches in it. My only criticism would be that the scene explaining the psychiatrist's diagnosis of Bosnia Syndrome should have come earlier on to help explain to viewers the odd actions of the actors.

Notwithstanding that it is a great film. Bonus points if you can pick out the scenes that were shot in Liverpool instead of London and watch out for handy hints on how to peg out washing with a head full of heroin !

Cllr Tim O'Kane

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.

Beautiful People deals with some grim & difficult topics – war in Bosnia, drugs, divorce, illegal immigration & more (without giving away any secrets) & uses the currently rather popular device of intertwining story lines to do so, but carries it off with humour & elegance. Such a combination of themes could have been sordid & depressing or worse trite, but in contrast Beautiful People is joyous & exhilarating – a real delight & well worthy of your time.

I was excited to find this film on cable, since it whipped through my local art house when it was in theaters so fast I had no chance to get to see it. My excitement was justified. I was moved by the film's edge and its talent. It was truly refreshing to see the combination of hand held camera technique and world class acting, with the likes of Linda Basset, Nicholas Farrell and Charlotte Coleman. As an American, who was shielded, as most of us were, from what was really happening in Europe during the Bosnian war of the mid nineties, I felt like a child who was finally getting the real story about a family secret. The presentation of realistic characters in a vibrant and real collage of parallel and interlaced lives, brought the big issues of ethnic hatred, racism, class prejudice and sexism into painful and sometimes humorous focus. I was very happy with the film's conclusion. It brought all those big issues to the table in a brilliant metaphor for the human condition, as it really exists under all the crap. A wonderful movie.