Dirty Pretty Things

Rating:
Summary: A thriller about forgotten people
Review: Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an illegal refugee from Nigeria, a doctor who scrapes by on two jobs in a London peopled by immigrants. One night, while trying to unclog a toilet in one of the rooms of the hotel where he works, he discovers a human heart stuffed into the pipes. This provides his unwilling entry into a very dark part of the underground economy, where he will ultimately be faced with choices that no one should have to make.

This terrific film uses the basic structure of a thriller to present a very human story with characters that are very easy to empathize with. These are good people with tragic stories trying to find a place in a work that seems to have no room for them. The relationship between Okwe and the Turkish girl Senay (Audrey Tautou), who has fled an arranged marriage, is very tender and melancholy. Kudos go to the entire cast as well as director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Steve Knight.


Rating:
Summary: Well worth the Viewing.
Review: I can watch this movie again and again.It is a very good representation of the other side of the Social Ladder. The extreme poor, Illegal Immigrants trying to make a life for themselves.This I would highly recommend to anyone to rent or buy.

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing, doesn't hold back, but somehow predictable
Review: My wife and I have been Audrey Tautou fans ever since we saw Amelie. We loved the cute, outside-the-box type that she played in that film. We likewise loved her similar character in her earlier film, Happenstance. While her (minor) character in The Spanish Apartment was different from these other characters, her outside-the-box personality was apparent enough to think that she must be typecast for this role. However, we were in for a bit of a shock with Dirty Pretty Things. Whereas the above films demonstrate the positive aspects of humanity, here was our heroine embroiled in a story that showed humanity in pain and at its worst. Yet, she is still quirky and still an outsider - but everyone in Dirty Pretty Things is too.

This film gives us a world of contraries. Tautou (Senay) is surrounded by these oppositions, living as a Turkish immigrant struggling to pay bills with a VISA that doesn't permit her to work. Moreover, she holds traditional values, but is forced to share her apartment with a man in order to make ends meet. Thus, she avoids the reality of her situation, side-stepping the immigration officials as well as the guy she is sharing a living space with.

Her roommate, Okwe, is likewise surrounded by contraries; a former doctor working as a hotel clerk, he was forced to leave his own country and is something of a wanted man. Further, he is a quiet man who, while at work, discovers a sinister secret - a human heart was flushed down a hotel toilet.

While both Senay and Okwe are people who would seem to have a tenuous hold on security, and thus very much to lose, as this thriller moves forward it seems instead that they have absolutely nothing to lose. The conditions of immigrants among the underclass are horrible, and the film brings these details into stark view. Where the discovery of the heart is shocking, the trials of our pair of roommates, and those around them, is even more deeply disturbing.

The real triumph of this film, however, is how it brings the unseemly side of life forward. Just under the facade of the hotel lies something ugly, and we, as viewers, begin to question how much ugliness lies underneath the facades we see every day.

The downside to this film, however, is its predictability as a thriller. While nothing is held back (in terms of human suffering), the actions of those involved seem to toe the line. Perhaps this is just another aspect of the unsettling realism - that given a certain set of circumstances, our actions would be predicable. On the other hand, it seems that the thriller aspects of this film take a back seat (and I'd venture to say intentionally so) to the dramatic.

Rating:
Summary: Love this movie
Review: This movie is fantastic and Audrey Tautou is quite simply the best actress to come out of Europe in quite some time. You can't go wrong buying, renting or borrowing this movie. Whatever you have to do, SEE IT! -Also, see "Venus Beauty Institute"

Rating:
Summary: In Nigeria they do many interesting things with pork...
Review: "But of course I used lamb."

I didn't know what to expect from Dirty Pretty Things because I had heard widely mixed reviews from those who had seen it. I felt confident that Sergi Lopez's performance would match his previous and equally bizarre/unusual performances in other films. Here, Lopez is sleazy and the worst kind of criminal, using vulnerabilities against those who essentially have no other alternative but to cooperate with him. Lopez has such an expressive face that manages to convey so much without actually conveying anything. You can't read him, and this gives all his characters a sort of impenetrable, mysterious quality.

In the film, a Nigerian illegal worker in London works three jobs and reveals very little about himself to those around him. It is not entirely clear early on from what he is trying to escape. He just works constantly, never sleeps and rents a couch from a Turkish immigrant (played by Audrey Tautou). Tautou's character is extremely cautious in case she is caught illegally working or accepting rent from the Nigerian.
The film chronicles the growing friendship between the two (Okwe and Senay) while a sordid mystery unfolds surrounding shady dealings in the hotel where both of them are employed. Several events occur to cause problems both for Okwe and Senay, but in the end the film resolves the issues at hand and loose ends are tied.

The `underworld' of illegal immigrants can be a gritty world, basically full of regular people who just want to make a better life for themselves but are forced into uncertain and unsavory circumstances because of their status in society. This film does an excellent job in portraying their day-to-day worries and how more opportunistic individuals exploit those worries.


Rating:
Summary: Intelligent film for people who don't like crap.
Review: I would say this film was a sleeper of 2002. It got by me, as many other Americans. This is an intelligent film for people who enjoy a well written story. With so much garbage coming out of "Hollywood" it was refreshing to se something with a character driven script, as apposed to special FX driven.
This movie exposes the dirty under side of London and its migrant workers. Audrey Tautou is delightful and a little sad, as a Turkish hotel maid who sheds her innocence throughout the story. Sergi Lopez was perfect as the greedy and manipulative hotel manager. Although the ending is a little simplistic, or neat, it dose prove to be practical.
Don't let this one slip by you, rent it, buy it, watch it.


Rating:
Summary: Slightly disappointing but impressive
Review: Dirty Pretty Things was at once a pleasant surprise and a slight disappointment. It stands head and shoulders above the wreckage of most recent Britflicks, but it still never quite reaches the heights. Part of the problem is that the background is the story, leaving us with an at times slight narrative and a very predictable final twist that seems very much like one of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Very Much as We Expected (the moment Chiwetel Ejiofor stops Sergi Lopez's hands from shaking you know exactly what's coming).

That said, it's still a worthwhile trip. Unlike most British films, and London ones in particular, it actually uses the city as a character - in this case the hidden city. We see virtually no ordinary British citizens. Instead the film is inhabited by the illegal immigrants who do the dirty jobs that no-one else wants, the lead character a Nigerian doctor who works double-shifts as taxi driver and hotel porter and rents a couch in Turkish maid Audrey Tatou's couch on a timeshare basis. This milieu is superbly captured, and you get a sense of a world not so much hidden as ignored. Frears direction too is back to the power and drive of his early work after his recent flabby American entries, although he still can't resist caricaturing the Immigration officials - rather than the bored, disinterested and impersonal reality he's opted for cheap comic book villains that diminishes every scene they appear in. Similarly, he doesn't always keep a tight enough rein on some of the supporting performances, Sophie Okenedo in particular: she can be a much better actress, but here she's allowed to veer too much to stereotype and has a couple of awkward moments. Lopez too falls back on some of his overfamiliar mannerisms, although Ejiofor is quite superb in the lead, and his easygoing scenes with Benedict Wong's mortuary waste disposal technician are minor highlights.

Nonetheless, with most British cinema so awful these days, this is definitely worth catching: a very good film even if it could have been even better.

The DVD transfer is fine but the extras are negligible - a brief featurette and a commentary with lots of dead air from Stephen Frears.

Rating:
Summary: Optimism's triumph
Review: The beautiful Audrey Tatou, who so many of us fell in love with in "Amelie", is given much more to work with in this gritty tale of London's illegal immigrants. She pulls it off with varying success. Luckily, she is surrounded by a great cast, some of whom manage to play unsavory characters without making them cartoonish. I found the ending a bit too easy, but overall I really enjoyed this film.