2002 British film
| Dirty Pretty Things | |
|---|---|
 Promotional film poster | |
| Directed by | Stephen Frears |
| Written by | Steven Knight |
| Produced by | Tracey Seaward Robert Jones |
| Starring | Chiwetel Ejiofor Audrey Tautou Sergi López Sophie Okonedo Benedict Wong Zlatko Buric |
| Cinematography | Chris Menges |
| Edited by | Mick Audsley |
| Music by | Nathan Larson |
| Production companies | BBC Films Celador Films |
| Distributed by | Miramax International (through Buena Vista International) |
| Release dates |
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| Running time | 97 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $10 million |
| Box office | $13.9 million |
Dirty Pretty Things is a 2002 British social thriller film directed by Stephen Frears and written by Steven Knight. Following the lives of two immigrants in London, it was filmed in a documentary style and was produced by BBC Films and Celador Films, and distributed by Buena Vista International through Miramax Films.
Plot
Okwe, a doctor in his home country (not initially named) who was forced to flee after being falsely accused of murdering his wife, lives in the United Kingdom as an undocumented immigrant. He drives a cab in London during the day and works at the front desk of a hotel at night, which is staffed by other immigrants, both documented and undocumented. He is pressed into giving medical treatment to other poor immigrants, including fellow cab drivers with venereal diseases. He is supplied with antibiotics by his friend Guo Yi, an employee at a hospital mortuary.
Juliette, a sex worker who regularly conducts her business at the hotel, informs Okwe about a blocked toilet in one of the rooms, and he fishes out a human heart. The manager of the hotel, Juan, runs an illegal operation at the hotel wherein immigrants swap kidneys for forged passports. After learning of Okwe's past as a doctor, Juan pressures him to join his operation as a surgeon, but Okwe refuses.
Senay is a Turkish Muslim seeking asylum who also works at the hotel as a cleaner. Her immigration status allows her to stay in the UK, provided she does not work; the hotel is a perfect cover because she is not named on its books. She allows Okwe to sleep on her sofa when she is not home, as she is from a conservative culture where men and women who are not married do not spend the night together under the same roof. After Senay is visited by Immigration Services, who inspect the hotel after finding a book of matches in her flat, Okwe prevents the officials from intercepting her.
No longer able to work at the hotel, Senay begins working in a sweatshop making clothes, which is also raided by officials looking for undocumented immigrants, who the manager gets rid of. The manager allows Senay to keep her job and not report her to the authorities in return for her performing oral sex on him; she initially complies before proceeding to bite him. Okwe finds her a place to stay at the hospital mortuary, while Senay asks him to accept Juan's proposition in his organ business to raise money to travel to America.
In desperation, Senay offers her kidney to Juan for a passport; Juan accepts the deal on condition he takes her virginity as well. Senay is later provided with a morning-after pill by Juliette. After learning of Senay's plan, Okwe agrees to perform the operation to ensure her safety, but only if Juan provides them both with passports under different names. After Juan delivers the passports, Okwe and Senay drug him, surgically remove his kidney, and sell it to Juan's contact.
Okwe plans to use his new identity to return to his young daughter in Nigeria, and Senay plans to start a new life in New York. Before they part at Stansted Airport, they mouth the words "I love you" to each other, and she gives him her cousin's address in New York. Senay boards her plane, and Okwe calls his daughter long-distance to tell her he is finally coming home.
Cast
- Chiwetel Ejiofor as Okwe/Olatokumbo Fadipe
- Audrey Tautou as Senay Gelik
- Sergi López as Sneaky (Juan)
- Sophie Okonedo as Juliette
- Benedict Wong as Guo Yi
- Damon Younger as Punter
- Paul Bhattacharjee as Mohammed
- Darrell D'Silva as Immigration officer
- Sotigui Kouyaté as Shinti
- Abi Gouhad as Shinti's son
- Zlatko Buric as Ivan
Reception
Critical response
Dirty Pretty Things received positive reviews. Metacritic gives it a rating of 78/100 based on reviews from 35 critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 94% based on 143 reviews, and an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus describes the film as "An illuminating and nuanced film about the exploitation of illegal immigrants." J. R. Jones of The Chicago Reader described it as an "impressive mix of entertainment and social comment, spinning a great mystery even as it confronts an ugly world". The New Yorker called the film "a social thriller—a creepy, tightly knit suspense film that, on the fly, reveals more about the lives of immigrants in London than the most scrupulously earnest documentary". a sentiment echoed by the authors of Sociology: An Introductory Textbook and Reader of the film as being "not a documentary but a social thriller which blends aspects of the global urban legends about child kidnapping for organs and prostitutes drugging unsuspecting barflies who wake up in a hotel bathtub minus a kidney".
Accolades
Dirty Pretty Things was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and won a British Independent Film Award for Best Independent British Film in 2003. For his performance as Okwe, Chiwetel Ejiofor won the 2003 British Independent Film Award for Best Actor.
References
- Dawtree, Adam (29 October 2001). "Miramax takes 'Pretty' rights". Variety. Retrieved 1 October 2022.
- "Dirty Pretty Things (15)". British Board of Film Classification. 25 October 2002. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
- "Dirty Pretty Things (2003) - Financial Information".
- "Dirty Pretty Things (2004) – Box office / business". Amazon.com. 24 February 2004. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
- Dirty Pretty Things at Box Office Mojo
- ^ Nehring, Daniel; Plummer, Ken (2014). Sociology: An Introductory Textbook and Reader. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781317861737.
- ^ Denby, David (15 September 2003). "Heartbreak Hotels". The New Yorker. Retrieved 16 August 2017.
- "Dirty Pretty Things". Metacritic.
- "Dirty Pretty Things". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved 5 October 2021.
- "Dirty Pretty Things". Chicago Reader. Retrieved 15 May 2017.
Further reading
- Stein, Rachel (2010). "Disposable Bodies: Biocolonialism in The Constant Gardener and Dirty Pretty Things". In Willoquet-Maricondi, Paula (ed.). Framing the World: Explorations in Ecocriticism and Film. Under the Sign of Nature. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0813930053.
- Wolf, Clark (2009). "Commodification, Exploitation, and the Market for Transplant Organs: A Discussion of Dirty Pretty Things". In Shapshay, Sandra (ed.). Bioethics at the Movies. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 170–185. ISBN 978-0801890772.
External links
- Official website
- Dirty Pretty Things at IMDb
- Dirty Pretty Things at AllMovie
- Dirty Pretty Things at Box Office Mojo
- Dirty Pretty Things at Rotten Tomatoes
- Dirty Pretty Things at Metacritic
| Stephen Frears | |
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| Feature films |
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| Television |
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| Works by Steven Knight | |
|---|---|
| Films written and directed |
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| Films written |
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| TV series created |
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- 2002 films
- 2002 crime drama films
- 2002 crime thriller films
- 2002 independent films
- British crime drama films
- British crime thriller films
- British independent films
- 2000s English-language films
- Edgar Award–winning works
- Films about immigration
- Films about organ trade
- Films directed by Stephen Frears
- Films set in hotels
- Films set in London
- Films shot in England
- Films shot in London
- Films with screenplays by Steven Knight
- Films about social realism
- 2000s British films
- Films scored by Nathan Larson
- Social thriller films
- English-language independent films
- English-language crime drama films
- English-language crime thriller films