Some links and references to Stephen Frears: "Dirty Pretty Things"

Frears finds the heart of London's underground
by Philip French

http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Critic_Review/Observer_review/0,,8...

"Dirty Pretty Things" is set in a sub-stratum of London inhabited by foreigners, in flight for a variety of reasons (personal, political, commercial) from their homelands. Living invisible lives, they are anonymous faces in the crowd to their mostly reluctant and ungrateful hosts. Strangers to each other, they help and sometimes exploit their fellows. (...) Frears combines the social commitment of the realistic school of British moviemakers from which he emerged in the Sixties with the happy readiness to shift from one genre to another that characterised the best directors of the old Hollywood studio system.

The Invisible London of Dirty Pretty Things
by Ted Hovet

http://www.literarylondon.org/london-journal/hovet.html

The film’s project to reveal the unseen begins with careful attention to concrete objects -- buildings, neighborhoods, homes, and of course people. Filmed on location in London and in the Shepperton Studios, Dirty Pretty Things takes us to unfamiliar areas and denies us helpful establishing shots that orient us to the city -- never once do we see, for instance, Big Ben, Westminster Abby, or Piccadilly Circus. It uses actors of many different nationalities who, if they speak English at all, speak it with a wide variety of accents and inflections. In doing so Dirty Pretty Things inevitably presents, at least to the typical cinemagoer, a different London -- if, indeed, it is even “London” at all. The film opens with Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) soliciting fares for his cab (not, of course, the iconic and “official” black cab of London but a simple passenger car) at Stansted Airport. He promises his potential customers that he can get them to Buckingham Palace for ten pounds, but instead of following him to this comfortingly familiar locale the film’s next scene takes us back to the cab office in an immigrant neighborhood of South London. As he enters the office, Okwe hands his identification card and license over to another driver, then reminds him to remove the crucifix around his neck: “your name is now Mohammed.” This exchange, in which clearly foreign workers blithely switch documents that disguise their true identity and status, may certainly raise anxieties about safety and the ability of the state to account for (and thus control) the inhabitants of the city-- anxieties that have likely increased in the years since this film was released. Yet this unfamiliar world, one of unstable, fluid identity, also reveals mutual support and camaraderie among its inhabitants. Far from threatening, the film depicts these characters as hard-working individuals trying to forge a living as they provide a crucial service to all of the “official” and “legal” inhabitants of the city.

Like Pulling Teeth (Or Stealing Kidneys): Stephen Frears On "Dirty Pretty Things"
by Erica Abeel

http://www.indiewire.com/people/people_030718frears.html

"If you treat people the way these people are treated in England, then you will create a criminal underclass. In some peculiar way that I can't really explain, England is both a very tolerant country and a sort of neo-racist country. People like this aren't made to feel welcome. It's a paradox. I can't really explain it. The reaction of the British government is to make peoples' flesh creep. Tell frightening stories. Instead of saying, 'These people are really quite harmless. And good for the British economy.' Instead they say, 'Oh, you'd better watch out, these people have three heads.'"