Dirty Pretty Things

From Stephen Frears, the Oscar(R)-nominated director of THE GRIFTERS (Best Director, 1990) and DANGEROUS LIAISONS, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS stars Audrey Tautou (AMÉLIE) in a harrowing tale of struggle and survival for two immigrants who learn that everything is for sale in London's secret underworld! Part of an invisible working class, Nigerian exile Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Turkish chambermaid Senay (Tautou) toil at a west London hotel that is full of illegal activity. Then late one night Okwe makes a shocking discovery, which creates an impossible dilemma and tests the limits of all they know! Honored with numerous European film awards and nominations -- including wins at the London Critics Circle Film Awards and the Venice Film Festival -- you'll find this gritty urban thriller to be thoroughly engrossing and impossible to forget!

The luminous Audrey Tautou (Amelie) stars in Dirty Pretty Things, a riveting thriller about an illegal immigrant in London named Okwe (Chiwetal Ejiofor, Amistad), a doctor in his homeland who now works days as a taxi driver and nights as a hotel desk clerk. When a hooker tells him there's a mess in one of the hotel's bathrooms, Okwe finds a human heart in the toilet. He soon discovers a snare of desperation, poverty, and black-market body organs--and finds that his only friend, a Turkish hotel maid (Tautou), may be the next to be caught. Dirty Pretty Things, skillfully directed by Stephen Frears (High Fidelity, Dangerous Liaisons, My Beautiful Laundrette), fuses taut suspense with an unsettling portrait of life among the British underclass of immigrant service workers. Thanks to the excellent cast and script, the movie makes its social points subtly, while the gripping story coils itself around you. --Bret Fetzer