Capsule Review: Dirty Pretty Things
Posted 29 Oct, 2005 at 14:28 by kael in /MovingPictures | Permanent link
Recommendation: Should see.
First impression: Fairly graphic, but not violent or pornographic. And yet it made me cringe a few times. Socially heavy, but not quite as hard hitting as Requiem for a Dream. Dissappointed that the billing made it look like Audrey Tautou was the star of the movie.
This is a movie about people who have fallen between the cracks of society, and how they are forced to struggle merely to survive. The movie centers on Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Serenity, Love, Actually) and his working as a cab driver during the day, conceirge by night, and very rarely sleeps. When he does, it is on Senay's (Audrey Tautou, Amélie, The Da Vinci Code) couch. Senay is a maid in the hotel in which Okwe is a conceirge.
Spoiler Warning
Problems begin when immigration begins to make a point of investigating Senay, who is on a refugee visa, and therefore not permitted to work, while Okwe must deal with the hotel boss after discovering a human heart in a lavatory. Troubles ensue as Senay tries to gain new employment, while Okwe, who was once a doctor, but is in England illegally, acts as a doctor for his fellow cab drivers.
Ejiofor is annoyingly brilliant in this movie. I say annoyingly, because although I recognized his face, I associated the actor with characters he has never played, and not with characters he has.
Tautou is quite good, and has had decent voice coaching to pull off a Turkish accent (keeping in mind that I haven't had lots of exposure to the accent, but enough to notice she hit the strong parts of that accent).
Over all, Frear's direction keeps the pace of the moving going slowly forward, like a train with brakes squealing plowing inevitably towards the stalled car of disaster flung across the tracks.