Dirty Pretty Things

Reviewed by EWAN McDONALD

(Herald rating * * * *)

Okwe, the new night receptionist at a seedy London hotel, is called upstairs to fix a blocked toilet. No wonder there's a problem with the plumbing: he finds a human heart stuck in the S-bend. He tells his boss, Sneaky (Sergi Lopez), and is told to forget about it.

This is the first of many mysteries that will unfold at and around the Baltic Hotel, where everyone has a secret. The main secret is that London — like most of the world's metropolis — cannot exist without a dark underbelly of illegal immigrants who — literally — do its dirty work.

We will learn that Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) may have been a doctor in Nigeria and may be a political exile. On the other hand he may be a murderer on the run. Senay, the chambermaid (Audrey Tautou), who says she ran away from an arranged marriage in Turkey, puts him up on the couch in her minuscule flat when he's not working at his two jobs, driving a cab and helping out at the hotel. Senay is interested in Okwe but he is determined to stay faithful to a wife back home.

He hangs with Guo Yi (Benedict Wong), who runs a poker school at his office in the mortuary where he works, Ivan, the hotel doorman with whom he runs a lucrative sideline, selling after-hours room service meals, and Juliette (Sophie Okonedo), the warm-hearted hooker who works from the hotel.

Every day, every one of these people and millions like them in the sleazy streets and suburbs and sweat-shops live in fear of the immigration officers who are constantly on their trail and in their faces.

But Okwe is determined to close one mystery: where the heart came from. He will find that Sneaky, a vile Spaniard, is involved, as we always knew he would be. He discovers that the hotel is the heart — sorry — of a dirty and not very pretty thing.

Part-thriller, part-black comedy, part-social document, it's the latest work of Stephen Frears, best known for his early English movies My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987), which were centred on Indian and Pakistani immigrants to London. He returns to his roots after two great American movies with John Cusack, The Grifters and High Fidelity, to combine all the parts into a fine movie of great integrity about little people trying to get a life.

Frears provides the commentary for the DVD, revealing that Tautou (Amelie) was nervous about her first English-speaking role, and that Lopez can barely speak English. The only other extra is a short behind-the-scenes feature.

DVD, video rental Out now