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 It
isn’t easy to make a living these days, but if you think you’ve
got it bad, think again. There are people who have it worse...much
worse. In Dirty Pretty Things, the latest film from prolific
director Stephen Frears, illegal immigrants are forced to work
menial service jobs in order to stay in the country, and it isn’t
a pretty sight. What is pretty is the film itself, which rises
above its dark subject matter to emerge as a strangely beautiful
love story with haunting suspense, unexpected humor and a payoff
that will blow you away.
Okwe (Chiwetel
Ejiofor) is a kind-hearted, sleep-deprived Nigerian doctor who
works a number of odd jobs in order to stay in London. One of
those jobs is as a front desk clerk in a seedy hotel, where he
works with Senay (Audrey Tautou), a Turkish chambermaid who is
desperate to find a better life in New York City. When Okwe finds
a human heart in one of the hotel bathrooms, he
stumbles upon a harrowing operation run by the sleazy hotel manager
(Sergi Lopez) where freshly donated organs are exchanged for fast
cash and phony passports.
Moviegoers
looking for a mesmerizing, intense and wholly original hero’s
journey are in for a thrill with Dirty Pretty Things. Director
Stephen Frears
takes his time to set the mood of Okwe’s predicament with an engaging
pace, and he executes his daily battle with frightening realism.
By the time the story
really kicks into gear, you know who the characters are (and who
they are to
each other), and that makes you sympathize with their journey
even more.
"Dirty
Pretty Things" is obviously a very serious film, but Frears
and first-time screenwriter Steven Knight inject the story with
an ample dose of humor and, more importantly, a powerful love
story between Okwe and Senay. Though they initially seem to be
living together out of necessity, we quickly realize that there
is a powerful bond between them, and at no point does it feel
fabricated or contrived. On the other hand, while the humor is
a welcome diversion from the dark nature of the subject matter,
it can, at times, be intrusive to the suspense.
As the Nigerian
immigrant Okwe, Chiwetel Ejiofor makes his feature-acting
debut with a tour-de-force performance. While Frears paints the
underbelly of
working class London with a dark, gritty paintbrush of periodically
bizarre proportions, Ejiofor traverses the grimy streets like
a guardian angel. He also
has believable chemistry with French ingénue Audrey Tautou,
who—after He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not—makes another clean
break from her cutie-pie Amelie image with a desperate,
tragic and endearing performance (all the more poignant since
she speaks English with a Turkish accent).
The supporting
performances are also quite strong and complement the main
players. Sergio Lopez (who played the crazed psycho in With
a Friend Like
Harry) is deliciously slimy as the hotel manager in charge
of the organ donor
operation, while Benedict Wong gives the film its biggest laughs
as Ejiofor’s
one-and-only true friend.
With an accomplished
career that includes films like Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters,
The Snapper and High Fidelity, Stephen Frears adds
yet another richly textured and extremely human story to his impressive
resume. Thanks to an incredible ending that comes out of nowhere—but
still makes perfect sense—Dirty Pretty Things turns out
to be a wonderfully unique love story that
cuts deeper than the rest.
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