/ARTS WEEKLY/BRITAIN: Fine Story, If Not Pretty

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Beverly Andrews

LONDON, Mar 11 2003 (IPS) - The once small stream of illegal immigrants coming to Western Europe and particularly the United Kingdom is now turning into a flood.

Many of these immigrants come from Eastern Europe, as a direct consequence of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, but there are an increasing number who come from Sub-Saharan Africa and they often do the jobs that many who were born in Britain would never dream of doing.

They work as farm labourers, hospital porters and mini-cab drivers. They cook meals, clean homes and serve in restaurants. They do this while trying to support friends and family back home.

Stephen Frears’s latest film ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ tells the story of one such refugee, a Nigerian doctor fleeing political persecution in his own country. Okwe’s story is characteristic of many others. The nameless, faceless individuals who live lives of quiet desperation.

Okwe has left Nigeria after a disagreement with a hospital superior where he refuses a request to fake an autopsy. Okwe’s refusal has tragic consequences, his home is firebombed and his wife murdered.

Fleeing for his life, Okwe now lives a kind of shadow existence where he never sleeps but works two jobs. One as a porter and the other as a mini-cab driver. All the while haunted by the fact that he has been forced to leave his young daughter behind.

At the same hotel Okwe meets Senay, a young Turkish woman who works as a cleaner. Together they make a discovery in one of the hotel rooms, which not only threatens their precarious existence in the country but also could ultimately cost them their lives.

Steven Knight, the scriptwriter, says: "When I originally started writing it the story was a novel. Then I decided to use reality with the story at a hotel. The porter is Nigerian and the chambermaid is Turkish. We actually do see it. The script told a story I understood. When I walk down the street and I see it out of the corner of my eye."

The irony of ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ is that the characters depicted are people most Britons encounter on a daily basis. Whether it is at hospitals or hotels or the people who drive the taxis which take them home. Their work is taken for granted but they are rarely asked questions about their lives.

One of the horrors the film explores is that of the illegal sell of human organs, taken from desperate people often by poorly trained doctors, who themselves are illegal immigrants. The film beautifully captures the parallel world that these characters inhabit. A world in which as the author points out "people are so poor that they had to sell parts of themselves."

To research his part for the film, Chiwete Ejiofor spoke to his parents who come from Nigeria. "Because of my own family history it was easy to understand," Ejiofor says.

For French actress Audrey Tautou, who starred in last year’s box-office smash ‘Amelie’, the task was much harder. Having no close relatives who had encountered similar experiences she choose to travel to London’s Turkish district . "I went to Dalston to meet some Turkish women and heard their story," she says.

Stephen Frears points out: "The main themes of the film are isolation and our basic need to survive. Most characters are in some ways totally isolated. They’re isolated as people, isolated in terms of circumstances.”

”In Okwe’s case he’s an illegal immigrant and ignored by the indigenous population, apart from the governmental faces who want to arrest him. He is also isolated because he is pretending to be something that he is not,” Frears adds. ”And that’s another theme of the role-playing. In certain cases people will take on another persona in order to survive from moment to moment."

The film also features a tender lover story between Okwe and Senay who gradually turn to each other for emotional support.

Ejiofor says of their relationship that "in many ways Okwe is totally blown away by Senay. There’s a possibility that he really didn’t think people could be like her and he’s so charmed by her that it renders him defenceless against her. I don’t think he has a choice in that matter, he will always protect and defend her."

Although ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ presents a bleak twilight world of cruel exploitation, it is not one devoid of hope and perhaps one of the most inspiring aspects of the film is the solidarity which exists between the various characters despite their cultural and religious differences.

It is this desire to help and support each other, which provides the film’s only ray of light. Ultimately though ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ highlights a dark nether world of desperation. A world which no one should be forced to inhabit.