Metro Pulse/Movie Guru/DIrty Pretty Things

Movie Guru Rating:

Nirvana (5 out of 5)

Comment
on this review

Dirty Pretty Things examines a dark side of London

by Joey Cody

Exactly how well do you know your housekeeper? Your dry cleaner? Your favorite prostitute? Do you know where they're from? Who their god is? What their profession was, once upon a time?

These are the people who live quietly, right under your nose. And they are stronger and more determined than you know. They are desperate people who are willing to sell their bodies and souls to be as free as an American.

While Dirty Pretty Things (2002, R) sets its tale in West London instead of New York or Miami, the people and situations are similar: illegal immigrants hustling to make it by enduring sweatshops, dodging shady sharks, employers, and immigration officials...and even risking death in their reach for the brass ring of citizenship.

Don't let the way DPT has been marketed here in the states throw you off: the poster, trailer, website (even the title) are deceptive, misleading you to think the film is an erotic, interracial thriller, starring the glossy Audrey Tautou (Amelie) as the main character. While it is a romance (of sorts), and a mystery (of sorts), it is not at all your standard whodunit with a full-frontal.

And while Tautou—as illegal Turkish immigrant, Senay—will surprise you with a new depth, playing the foreign beauty with a bruised delicacy, she is not our hero. That role is Okwe's. Okwe (Chiwitel Ejiofor) is a Nigerian refugee hiding in London. Although he's a doctor, he works two jobs as a minicab driver and a night porter at the Hotel Baltic, chewing qaat to keep going. In his free time (snort!), and with the help of his mordant Chinese friend, Guo Yi (Benedict Wong), who works in a hospital morgue, Okwe has become a medical Robin Hood, pilfering medical supplies to treat other illegals who are too scared to see a doctor. He's a good chap, providing his fellow cabbies with antibiotics to clear up the clap (and their marriages).

Senay, who is a maid at the hotel, is an idealist who keeps her head down and scrubs toilets to make it to New York, where they put lights in the trees, and the policemen ride white horses. She and Okwe are not only coworkers, but also platonic roommates, discreetly sharing their apartment key.

Okwe is precisely the dreamy guy you'd never notice because you're too busy handing him your keys. He's a doctor, he cooks, he's a good dad, and he's a man who risks his own un-naturalized neck to help his fellow asylum-seekers. Oh yeah, and he also looks the other way when your connection comes calling at 2 a.m., a function that the hotel manager, "Sneaky" (Señor Juan, played by Sergi López) threateningly reminds him of: "Strangers come to hotels to do dirty things. In the morning it's our job to make things pretty again."

Sneaky is not exactly the villain you're expecting. He points out a vast moral gray area when it comes to his black market organ business. He is, after all, saving someone's life and providing the donor with documentation and cash. On the other hand, most of the butchers who slice into your gut to snatch a kidney can't be bothered with silly little things like blood-typing or surgical hygiene.

When la migra starts sniffing around Senay, and Sneaky blackmails Okwe into not reporting a nasty plumbing problem (a human heart clogging the toilet in Rm. 510), DPT is no longer a quirky look at refugee life, but a scramble for survival. The unlikely duo become painfully aware that simply working your ass off won't cut it, and you become painfully aware of just how much you'd be willing to compromise to get off the flypaper of the underground.

Directed by Stephen Frears (My Beautiful Laundrette, High Fidelity) and clocking in at 107 minutes, DPT is an almost perfect little movie. The story, written by Steven Knight (the original Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?) is tender and shocking, exposing the often bleak, also charming, underbelly of London. Knight has a gift for the language and anxieties of immigrants, and Frears' solid, no-nonsense direction makes room for some great, understated performances. Of the few missteps, the most distracting are those that wrench us back to our image of Tautou as the cloying gamine: Knight allows Senay to whimper, "hold me," and Frears lets the camera linger on Tautou's doe eyes for too long. But the surprise ending—both satisfying and sad—makes up for those minor errors.

As you watch, you must contend with the fact that you are not American (or Canadian or British) by divine intervention—it's pure dumb luck. You just don't know how close you were to coming down the chute as a Sudanese woman with nine hungry children, an amputated leg, and AIDS. And why haven't you ever truly seen these people before?

"Because," as Okwe tells a non-immigrant smuggler, "we are the people you do not see. We drive your cars. We make your beds. We suck your cocks."

And that's the heart of it.