"Dirty Pretty Things" returns director Stephen Frears to the multi-ethnic, working class Britain of his early success "My Beautiful Laundrette," but now he's looking at illegal immigrants from countries that were not necessarily part of the British Empire and are more desperate.
It is a shadow world of fear more commonly shown in American films than British ones -- and that's without including any information of how they got there, what with the news full of crushed train-runners in the Chunnel and limp smuggled bodies in trucks and boats. Audrey Tatou is far from the gamine American audiences were first introduced to, as a prickly Turkish immigrant.
The plot has twisty and intricate double-crosses that reminded me of the old sci fi movie "Coma," not just natives vs. immigrants, but frequently fellow immigrants manipulating, abusing, and taking advantage of others lower on the food chain as they use every possible trick to survive.
While we get a glimpse at the very complex motivations of the push/pull driving immigration, from social and religious restrictions to political refugees to economic betterment, there is a bit too much of the Noble Immigrant vs. the venal Nativists, culminating in a very explicit statement of assertion that could be straight from the mouth of John Steinbeck's Tom Joad: "We are the invisible ones who clean your rooms . . ." with a much more explicit etc. about being used as sex workers. But they are individuated and we care for the individuals very much.
As far as I could tell, the title is not explicitly referred to, but the accents are frequently difficult to decode.
(REVISED March 29, 2008 as my original submission on 31 August 2003 evidently offended someone, probably due to a direct quote I included from the film's dialog.)
It is a shadow world of fear more commonly shown in American films than British ones -- and that's without including any information of how they got there, what with the news full of crushed train-runners in the Chunnel and limp smuggled bodies in trucks and boats. Audrey Tatou is far from the gamine American audiences were first introduced to, as a prickly Turkish immigrant.
The plot has twisty and intricate double-crosses that reminded me of the old sci fi movie "Coma," not just natives vs. immigrants, but frequently fellow immigrants manipulating, abusing, and taking advantage of others lower on the food chain as they use every possible trick to survive.
While we get a glimpse at the very complex motivations of the push/pull driving immigration, from social and religious restrictions to political refugees to economic betterment, there is a bit too much of the Noble Immigrant vs. the venal Nativists, culminating in a very explicit statement of assertion that could be straight from the mouth of John Steinbeck's Tom Joad: "We are the invisible ones who clean your rooms . . ." with a much more explicit etc. about being used as sex workers. But they are individuated and we care for the individuals very much.
As far as I could tell, the title is not explicitly referred to, but the accents are frequently difficult to decode.
(REVISED March 29, 2008 as my original submission on 31 August 2003 evidently offended someone, probably due to a direct quote I included from the film's dialog.)