Dirty Pretty Things
From Stephen Frears, the Oscar(R)-nominated director of THE GRIFTERS (Best Director, 1990) and DANGEROUS LIAISONS, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS stars Audrey Tautou (AMÉLIE) in a harrowing tale of struggle and survival for two immigrants who learn that everything is for sale in London’s secret underworld! Part of an invisible working class, Nigerian exile Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Turkish chambermaid Senay (Tautou) toil at a west London hotel that is full of illegal activity. Then late one night Okwe m
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Tightly Structured Thriller With Something To Say,
One night, while Okwe is working at the hotel, he is asked to check on a room and discovers a human heart. When he tells his boss Sneaky Juan (Sergi López), he’s told to keep quiet or he’ll risk deportation. This causes Okwe to have a moral dilemma, which drives this fascinating story of the underside of London live.
Without revealing too much of the plot, “Dirty Pretty Things” keeps raising the stakes and makes you really care about the plight of the main characters.
Fans of the international hit “Amélie,” might be a bit surprised by Ms. Tautou’s performance as Senay. Some might find her work shocking, but it clearly indicates that Tautou is an actor unafraid of taking risks. She and Mr. Ejiofor are a pleasure to watch on screen together.
Okwe is reminiscent of some of Sidney Poitier’s early films. He’s sensitive, noble and has strong moral convictions. That’s something you don’t see much in film today. Ejiofor’s performance is all the more remarkable given the world in which his character lives in. Okwe is surrounded by morally bankrupt people that will do anything to become British citizens. He stands tall in the face of many temptations.
While a fascinating and provocative film, “Dirty Pretty Things” may not be for everybody. However, if you’re looking for an intelligent story with complex characters and don’t mind venturing into a seedy world, this film is for you.
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|Dirty rather than pretty,
Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a Nigerian immigrant in London, lives with (but is not involved with) prickly Turkish immigrant Senay (Audrey Tatou), both of whom struggle against immigrant officials — and their own feelings. Okwe works by his own strong morals, hampered by a dark secret. But one day Okwe makes a grisly discovery in the hotel where he works — a clog in a toilet that turns out to be a human heart.
His boss Juan (Sergi Lopez) tells him to not say anything. Does Okwe obey him? Of course not. He digs deeper, and soon uncovers a sinister web that hits close to the heart: Desperate immigrants sell their organs in exchange for forged papers and passports. As the immigration officials start to close in on Okwe and Senay, they must figure out what to do about the organ smuggling ring.
A lot of movie moralizing is contrived and poorly-scripted. But Stephen Frears manages to stick the moral dilemmas in the faces of the viewers and make them stick. Okwe’s conflicted feelings when he discovers the organ trafficking are wonderful, especially as he himself is a doctor who could help people, but working for an evil man. Similarly we see Senay, a religious girl, in a slow, inexorable downward slide.
We see many immigrants, all with different dreams, goals, and pasts. And Frears makes them all come alive. He shows London as a city with a dark underbelly, with plenty of sinister big buildings where immigrant workers struggle to remain anonymous. Most sinister of all: That people will sell their organs or their bodies in order to find a better life.
Audrey Tatou shatters the public perception of her in “Dirty Pretty Things,” shifting into the role of a trodden-on Turkish maid. She’s absolutely masterful, fragile and sad. Chiwetel Ejiofor brings wonderful expressiveness and dignity to his role, but doesn’t have quite the dimension of Lopez or Tatou. Sergi Lopez is one of the best screen villains in quite some time, absolutely making the screen sparkle. But you’ll hate his guts. Also good is Sohie Okonedo as an upbeat hooker and Zlatko Buric as the likable doorman.
Not for the faint of heart, “Dirty Pretty Things” left me staring at a semi-dark screen when the film had ended. Powerful, gritty, and stark. One of the must-sees of the year.
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|London’s Underground UnderDogs get their day,
Okwe is such a character. He is a man of principles, working shoulder to shoulder with desperate people in a world without principles. His status as an illegal alien makes it impossible for him to even think about working as a Doctor. So to make ends meet he works two menial jobs. He drives a cab for a company with other drivers who routinely stop him in the back room to get treatment for their gonorrhea. At his other job he works as night porter at the kind of hotel that has an hourly rate to accommodate the prostitutes who bring their work to these rooms.
Okwe is the kind of man who plays chess and engages in deep, meaningful conversations for fun. His friend Guo Yi works at the hospital morgue, loses to Okwe in chess, and procures antibiotics for all the cases of the drip back at the cab company.
This movie also has several characters who see nothing wrong with exploiting the perpetually scared immigrants. Two different characters force desperate young women into having sex rather than being reported to Immigration, and in this movie these coerced rapes are just tips of the seedy iceburg underbelly.
The way the movie progresses was uplifting to me, though, although it would be too much of a spoiler to say why. By the end I felt that the noble characters had escaped with their self-respect intact, and the two scumbags had received comeuppances of a painful sort.
The cinematography was reminiscent of Tautou’s other famous film, Amelie. If you like watching movies about characters that you can care about, I recommend Dirty Pretty Things highly.
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