vernon film society
Bringing the best in world and Canadian film to film lovers of Vernon and the North Okanagan
DIRTY PRETTY THINGSCountry: UK "Once again, Frears -- who has enjoyed a glorious run of diverse, good-quality movies, from "My Beautiful Laundrette" to "High Fidelity" -- has crafted a unique gem." - Washington Post
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| Some things are too dangerous to keep secret.
"It's an exciting but brainy, cross-cultural thriller about modern London and life in a contemporary urban pressure cooker, and it depends more on plot, character and atmosphere than it does on chases and gunfire." - Chicago Tribune |
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Stephen Frears, the director of such classics as THE
GRIFTERS and DANGEROUS LIASONS, returns with
this provocative and gripping film, a part of the Masters
Programme at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival.
Working in a gritty and unadorned style, Frears (who
won the award for Best Director at Venice Film Festival
for the film) explores contemporary London society entirely
through the eyes of a “non-WASP” subculture
peopled by Turks, Chinese, Nigerians, Spaniards—all
of whom are working in service jobs on the margins of
English society. Chiwetel Ejiofor (AMISTAD)and
Audrey Tautou (AMELIE) play illegal immigrants
Okwe and Senay, who live in an unstable netherworld
of stalking immigration officials and under-the-table
low paying jobs. Okwe is a Nigerian who works two jobs:
by day he drives a taxi, at night he is a hotel porter.
A kind and sensitive man, he has a mysterious past.
When a persistent immigration officer begins to track
him, he is forced to quickly relocate and ends up living
on a couch in the dingy apartment of Senay, a shy and
beautiful hotel chambermaid. One night at the hotel,
he unwittingly stumbles across a bizarre event that
leads him to suspect that human organs are being traded
by people desperate for money and passports. With no
way to report this shocking discovery without revealing
their illegal status, they find themselves drawn into
a terrifying underworld. Combining Frears’ deeply
rooted rooted compassion for the downtrodden with an
almost Hitchcockian style of horror and suspense, DIRTY
PRETTY THINGS captures as a revealing social document
and grips as a shocking tale of spiraling intrigue.