Interviewer: Actually the film made me slightly uneasy, because it's hard to pin down the genre. I mean, treating such grave issues in a noir format.
Frears: Why does that make you uneasy? It makes me cheer. I can see that I like crossing genres, I don't like sticking within a genre. You are, alas, more serious than I am.

[Like Pulling Teeth (Or Stealing Kidneys), indieWIRE 2002]

After a very varied late-Nineties run of movies both in and outside Hollywood - the Peckinpah-project-he-never-made The High-Lo Country, the downbeat Liam, the sly reprise with Cusack that was High Fidelity - Frears returned to what, at first, could seem to be something he's got down pat.

Dirty Pretty Things is London-set, has cogent things to say about the state of the transplant market (legal and otherwise), immigrant workers (legal and otherwise) and those who exploit both (state-salaried and otherwise).

Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a kind-hearted Nigerian doctor, and Senay (Amelie's Audrey Tautou), a Turkish chambermaid, work at the same West London hotel.

The hotel is run by Senor Sneaky and is the sort of place where shady business (drug dealing and prostitution) takes place.
However, when Okwe accidentally finds a human heart blocking one of the rooms' toilet, he is also uncovering something far more sinister…

Although low-key in many ways, Dirty Pretty Things is a masterly juggling act. It has its thriller elements - although they show a new strand in Frears' beloved genre.

It has an authentic-feeling look at a side of the London underbelly rarely seen in drama. It has some conscience. It has the customary superb performances (Ejiofor in particular is a commanding presence) performing a sharp script by - of all people - the originator of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire ?

And Frears fires on all cylinders, seemingly having a ball.

The result is a decent handful of international awards, and also a very real sense of an accomplished director finding a synthesis of experience, technique, collaborators and material. Most of his contemporaries should be envious.

Frears, of course, remains self-effacing on the subject :

"I like that the film transgresses the restrictions imposed on it. In other words, you're supposed to make a film in one way, but I'll make one that has this and this and that in it. This may be foolish on my part, but it seems quite genuine…It suits me to be both serious and frivolous at the same time"

 

Senay		Audrey Tautou
Sneaky (Juan)		Sergi Lopez
Okwe		Chiwetel Ejiofor
Juliette		Sophie Okonedo
Guo Yi		Benedict Wong
Ivan		Zlatko Buric
Director		Stephen Frears
Producer		Robert Jones Tracey Seaward
Screenplay		Steven Knight
Photography		Chris Menges
Editor		Mick Audsley
Production Designer		Hugo Luczzyc-Wyhowski
Music		David Byrne Nathan Lawson Christian Hanson

2001 GB 107 mins