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Dirty Pretty Things Director: Stephen Frears MA 15+ Palace Nova, Now screening 
The colourful posters for this film, featuring a bare-shouldered Audrey ('Amelie') Tautou, will attract some unsuspecting viewers to what is a powerful, none too pretty, thriller. Fans of Tautou's acting won't be disappointed, though, with her portrayal of a na•ve Turkish refugee in present-day London at the centre of the story. Written by Steven Knight and beautifully filmed by Chris Menges, this is the latest superb work from Stephen Frears, director of films including 'High Fidelity' and 'My Beautiful Laundrette'.Senay (Tautou) says she left Turkey so as not to become like her mother. She secretly and platonically shares her flat with a Nigerian man, Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor). With jobs scarce, new arrivals such as these are the most desperate and therefore vulnerable to exploitation in sweat shops, shady hotels and as 'mini-bus' drivers. This means there's an underworld including highly-qualified people working in menial roles, and women forced into prostitution. But there are other even more sinister trades, and this film offers a dark vision of how refugees can be most grossly pressured with the lure of forged travel and citizenship documents. Okwe is a doctor. In his position as desk clerk at the superficially classy Baltic Hotel, he doesn't want to get involved but finds the moral dilemmas are not so simple. "Good at chess; bad at life," we are told the saying goes, and therefore we are disheartened about the prospects by Okwe's excellent board-skills. But we are also told, "There's nothing so dangerous as a virtuous man," and Okwe helps everyone, including the motley bunch of his fellow cabbies in his second job, when they all get the clap. At the heart of this movie are some very good people having a dreadful time so it's easy to sympathise and identify with them. Frears has deftly cast the cute and vulnerable Tautou in the role of an asylum seeker, to good effect. Watching her character at risk of spiralling downward in a Britain that deprives her of her human rights is highly suspenseful viewing. She is hounded by Immigration Enforcement officers at her cash job as a hotel maid, where she is employed to make the place 'pretty' after the 'dirty' doings of the night before. In this fictional, personal-journey form, the inevitable, chilling repercussions of hardline government policies for so-called 'illegals,' somehow becomes clearer. It's a story of love between people, but of their rejection and persecution by the state. "Strangers will always surprise you," we are reminded, and when Senay stops sucking and starts biting, the story takes some sharp turns. This tough, modern fable about people not getting a fair go, portrays a London whose heart has gone down the toilet. Its originality surprises and entertains, strangely, tensely and generously.  |
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