Review
Dirty Pretty Things
Starring Audrey Tatou and Chiwetel Ejiofor
Directed by Stephen Frears
Opens Friday, August 15
The Globe Cinema
Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a Nigerian refugee living in London and working two jobs – taxicab driver by day and hotel front desk clerk by night. When he finds a human heart clogging up a lavatory toilet in his hotel, he is told by his boss, Señor Juan (Sergi Lopez), to turn a blind eye because hotels are where people go to get rid of their "dirty things." Clearly conflicted, Okwe must choose between reporting the missing organ or saving his own skin, because he is living in London illegally.
Dirty Pretty Things, the new film from Stephen Frears, is part social drama and part potboiler. It works best as a white liberal guilt stimulator for immigration issues wrapped in a web of intrigue. For the most part, the film focuses on Okwe and Senay (Audrey Tautou, in her first significant post-Amelie role) a Turkish immigrant constantly on the run from government immigration goons.
While Tautou does solid work as the demure yet headstrong Senay, it’s Ejiofor who carries the film and leaves the most striking impression. His Okwe is an unassuming, intelligent individual called upon to be heroic. While Okwe does a lot of selfless things, he is (for the most part) never portrayed as saintly. Ejiofor (a U.K.-born actor who studied his parents’ accents for the part) affords Okwe a lot of sympathy with his soft-spoken demeanor and naturally empathetic presence. Lopez is good, but he seems to already be settling into Euro-ham mode, overplaying his unctuous character with great enthusiasm.
While Dirty Pretty Things is certainly a humanist film about how much it sucks to be an immigrant (illegal or otherwise), it never degenerates into misery. Frears is to be commended for allowing the characters to develop in time without giving them needless personality quirks or resorting to conventional plotting – that is, until the film’s denouement, when the dialogue suddenly resorts to platitudes and complex characters turn into plot ciphers. Dirty Pretty Things ends on an unsatisfying conventional note, which is a testament to Frears’s weakness as a director.
After establishing himself in the U.K. and heading to Hollywood, Frears has been behind some of the most potentially interesting films of the past 15 years. Besides High Fidelity, Frears has also helmed The Grifters, Hero, Dangerous Liaisons and The Hi-Lo Country, to varying degrees of success. Unfortunately, Frears has never established any kind of visual style or injected any sort of distinct personality into his work, often resulting in potentially great films left wanting. The disappointing ending of Dirty Pretty Things may very well be related to problems with Steven Knight’s screenplay, but it’s Frears, and his slavish devotion to the written word, who must shoulder the blame.
Regardless, Frears is a craftsman, and Dirty Pretty Things, despite its problems, is actually a lot of fun to watch and worth seeing. The film manages to have a social conscience and be thoroughly entertaining, and while Dirty Pretty Things’ unfortunate ending might have been cause for revolt in a less ambitious film, here it’s forgivable. Almost. |
Copyright ©2003 FFWD. All rights reserved.