“Dirty Pretty Things” is a movie about lives of immigrants living in London, England. There are 4 characters who stood out to me in the film in the first 30 minutes of it. Okwe, the protagonist, is a Nigerian immigrant who is a driver and a hotel receptionist. The first 30 minutes of the film showed his day as he runs in to other characters of the film such as Juliette, Senior Juan and Senay. Juliette is a prostitute who is also a refugee and she says, “I don’t exist, remember?” This quote made me think about being a refugee, and being legally non-existent. Senay, who lives with Okwe, is a hotel cleaner, is very naïve and gullible. She shows contrast to Okwe who is more educated and worldly. Senior Juan tells Okwe “When the room becomes dirty, we make it clean again so no one knows”. I thought this quote describes how the underground community of London works. Although horrible and sketchy things happen, people hide it so that no one knows.

We discussed in class that the hotel could be used as an analogy of the underground world of London. There are many illegal immigrants who are invisible to the surface of the city. This film made me think about what it would mean to live as an illegal immigrant and at the same time working in shady environment. I also thought of other works we studied in this course such as “What We All Long For” and “District 9”. In “What We All Long For”, the characters, although they are legal immigrants, feel that they don’t assimilate in the Canadian society. Wherever they go, they feel like their families don’t belong to Canada and long to feel comfort where they live. In district 9, the aliens (crabs) live a very different life from all the rest of the societies because they are separated from the rest of the world and people don’t consider them as regular individuals. I thought that the crabs are similar to the immigrants in London from the film “Dirty Pretty Things” because their rights and livelihood are very unstable and not protected legally by the government. They are almost like not existing in the society they live in.