Jami Bernard
Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Doug Pratt
Ray Pride
Stu VanAirsdale
..Gary
Dretzka
..Leonard
Klady
..David
Poland
..Ray
Pride
Dirty Pretty Things
Directed by: Stephen Frears___________________________________
Walden pops to mind watching the contemporary immigrant plight depicted in Dirty Pretty Things, specifically Henry David Thoreau's observation that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." This microcosm of humanity depicted in the film gravitates toward an old London hotel with vestiges of a more glorious past. Its Nigerian desk clerk (Chiwetel Ejiofar) was a doctor forced to flee a vindictive regime, a Turkish chambermaid (Audrey Tautou) has escaped a misogynistic environment and its Spanish concierge (Sergei Lopez) has reinvented himself as a fixer if the fee is right.
It is a decidedly unflattering portrait of a city and a nation that has opened its doors to the oppressed and dispossessed. However, it prefers they remain invisible or keep a low profile once inside the gate.
There's no question that Steven Knight's screenplay has a quiet authority that transcends tragedy. The hurdles these people have already cleared created a survivor's mentality that has no place for pity. They are isolated but not broken or ready to retire from life. That said, the film is deceptive in its complexity and its difficult to imagine many filmmakers capable of keeping it simple without resorting to cliché or the banal. On first blush it recalls a wave of films that focused on European guest workers back in the 1970s and embraced comedy in Bread and Chocolate and melodrama in Fassbinder's Fear Eats the Soul - Ali. However, director Stephen Frears steers the story in an entirely different direction. It is not about someone adapting to a new culture, rather a sub-strata within society that operates by its own rules and rarely enters into the mainstream.
Odwe (Ejiofar) has somehow managed to make his way to England, likely on a temporary visa long since expired. He lives in the shadows as the hotel's night clerk and drives a taxi during the day, taking a herbal stimulant to ward off fatigue. He shares a flat with Senay (Tautou) but their paths rarely cross longer than to exchange the door key. It seems somehow like the setup for a bygone romantic comedy. Instead, the action turns on the seemingly bizarre.
One evening a prostitute who services the hotel tells him that there's a problem in one of the bathrooms. He arrives to find an overflowing toilet and when he pulls out what's clogging the pipes, uncovers a human heart. His buddy in the hospital morgue (Benedict Wong) virtually yawns when the incident is retold. Somehow it's eluded Odwe that unable to sell their souls, poor, desperate immigrants give up part of themselves - generally kidneys. The former doctor almost doesn't believe it. However, just to be sure he goes to Juan, unaffectionately known as Sneaky, who makes it his business to know all that goes on behind closed doors.
The traffic in human organs is the currency of this new generation of residents. It buys passports and residency cards, apartments and food to put on tables. From Sneaky's perspective everyone wins - the desperate arrivee finds a measure of security, the Anglo unable to secure a vital organ through National Health gets the gift of life and, he pockets the cash. Of course, when things go wrong, as obviously occurred with the man with the missing heart, it messes up the natural flow.
Sneaky resents having his morality put under the spotlight and decides to find out about his African inquisitor. He learns that he "had" to leave Nigeria and really perks up to discover that he's a surgeon. The Spaniard would love to leverage the dark past to have a qualified doctor in his makeshift operating room. While he's unable to do it directly, he finds a way to capitalize on Senay's precarious situation of being dogged by immigration police (her visa does not allow her to work) and taking any job for slave wages.
The truly amazing thing about Dirty Pretty Things is that the heart beating within this social commentary/thriller is that of a love story. The myriad reasons that prevent Odwe and Senay from even considering a romantic relationship are considerable, even daunting. But they are ever present, providing an emotional involvement in what might have otherwise been a crackerjack political thriller.
The cast of largely unfamiliar faces is uniformly excellent and even Tautou, best known as Amelie, is unrecognizable as a rather plain English-speaking Turk. Frears opts to create the illusion of reality in this largely after hours world. Music is used sparingly to punctuate rather than wash through a scene and the gliding camerawork of Chris Menges accepts the harsh, ugly quality that poorly lit rooms offer.
I'm not sure it matters but assume the title is a British idiom lost in translation. There are ample candidates for Dirty Pretty Things but few films as inventive, surprising or emotionally satisfying.
An Interview With Audrey Tautou
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Release
Date: July 18, 2003
Rated: R
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Starring: Audrey Tautou, Sergi Lopez, Sophie
Okonedo, Benedict Wong, Zlatko Buric
Produced by: Tracey Seaward, Robert Jones
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Distributor:
Miramax
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Review Date: July 18, 2003
