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ILLEGAL
ALIENS EXCHANGE KIDNEYS FOR PASSPORTS IN DIRTY
PRETTY THINGS
 "We
drive your taxis, make your beds, and suck your cocks," according
to Dr. Okwe (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) in Dirty
Pretty Things, commenting on the fate of illegal
aliens in London. A physician who left Nigeria to avoid arrest
and prosecution for a murder that he did not commit, Okwe has
two jobs and hopes that he will remain afloat as an illegal
alien. In the daytime, he drives a taxi, hawking at the airport
for customers who have been stood up by those who promised
to pick them up; at night, he is a porter at the Hotel Baltic.
When the film begins, the taxi dispatcher has gonorrhea and
asks Okwe to get some medicine. One of Okwe's friends, Gui
Yi (played by Benedict Wong), is able to supply the medicine.
A Turkish friend, Sinay (played by Audrey Tautou), is also
an illegal alien. In love with him, she also has two jobs--as
a seamstress at a sweatshop whose owner demands to be serviced
daily and as a maid at the Hotel Baltic. The hotel is in part
a front for illegal activities. A prostitute regularly entertains
clients, but not in the Chichester Suite. That room is reserved
for illegal aliens who are willing to exchange a kidney for
a passport, a racket run by a hotel employee, Sneaky (played
by Sergi Lopez), that greatly displeases Okwe. Sneaky points
out that "Strangers come to hotels to do dirty things;
in the morning it's our job to make things pretty again." The
story comes to a head (pardon the pun) one day when Sinay decides
to bite rather than suck. She then races across town to Okwe
for protection. He, in turn, secures temporary lodging at Gui
Yi's place of work, a mortuary. Since she cannot bear sleeping
in the same facility with dead people, she goes to the hotel,
and consents to have her kidney harvested so that she can get
a passport to join her sister in New York. Sneaky, of course,
also takes advantage by forcing her to have sex, in the process
finding out that she is a virgin. When Okwe finds out what
Sinay wants, he tells Sneaky that he will perform the operation
so that she will not die due to unsanitary conditions. His
decision sets up a scene in which members of the audience will
clap, as justice is finally served. Directed by Stephen Frears, Dirty
Pretty Things is an exposé of what illegal
aliens, desperate to save their lives, face in more cities
than London. Accordingly, the Political Film Society has nominated Dirty
Pretty Things as best film exposé and
best film on human rights of 2003. MH
WASHINGTON
HEIGHTS UNMASKS THE PLIGHT OF DOMINICANS IN
NEW YORK
 Washington
Heights, directed by Alfredo de Villa, is the
second film screened this year about Dominicans in New York
City. Whereas Manito involves an
older brother trying to help his younger brother make it in
American society as the family's first high school graduate
despite a stingy father, Washington Heights is
about an older brother, twenty-eight-year-old Carlos Ramírez
(played by Manny Perez) who gets no help from his family in
launching his career dreams. Carlos is a talented artist waiting
for a big break as an author/illustrator of comic books for
Gotham Press; meanwhile, he inks comic books prepared by others.
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His girlfriend Maggie (played by Andrea Navedo), a dressmaker,
is weary of waiting for him to pop the question after he gets
that break. She lives with her ex-con brother Angel (played
by Bobby Cannavale). Carlos's elderly father Eddie (played
by Tomás Milían), a widower, owns a corner convenience
store, but he is not making money on the store; he would have
preferred to be a professional singer, but he had to pay bills
after his son Carlos was born. One day a thief comes into Eddie's
store; rather than opening his safe, Eddie tries to argue with
him, and the thief shoots him. Eddie is then paralyzed from
the waist down and cannot run the store until he is physically
rehabilitated. To his surprise, Sean Kilpatrick (played by
Jude Ciccolella) tells Carlos that he loaned $25,000 to Eddie,
an amount that must be repaid. Carlos now must juggle his budding
art career with running his father's convenience store and
serving as primary caregiver for his father, but he plods on
despite his father's lack of support for his art talent. Meanwhile,
Angel's brother Mickey (played by Danny Hoch), the caretaker
of the apartment where Eddie and Carlos live together, has
ambitions of winning a bowling tournament in Las Vegas, but
he needs $3,000 for the entry fee and wants $2,000 for travel
expenses. When Mickey learns that his father gave Eddie $25,000
but will not support his prospective bowling career to the
tune of $5,000, he goes ballistic. Soon, Mickey visits Maggie,
discovers a cache of $30,000 that obviously belongs to Angel,
and puts the cash into a duffle bag. He then brings the bag
with $25,000 to Carlos so that he can pay off the loan. Next,
Carlos visits Maggie and puts the cash back in the same hiding
place. When Angel finds $5,000 missing, he comes after Carlos
just as Eddie is returning to run the store and Carlos has
completed his first original comic book for a publisher, thus
launching his professional career. Once in the store, Mickey
admits that he, not Carlos, took the money, whereupon a predictable
tragedy unfolds. Thus, both Manito and Washington
Heights lament that family ties are breaking
down in the individualistic United States while also saying
that the road to success is open to those who work hard and
work honestly. However, only Washington Heights explains why
so many Dominicans left their country to immigrate to the United
States, namely, that sugar interests were responsible for the
American military invasion and occupation in 1965-1966, following
which the large sugar companies dispossessed small landowners
in order to establish sugar plantations, thus creating thousands
of surplus people. MH
POLITICAL
FILM SOCIETY MEMBERS MEETING
The annual meeting of members of the Political
Film Society will be held at 8481 Allenwood Road, Los Angeles,
on August 22 at 11:00 a.m. The agenda consists of the election
of officers to the Board of Directors.
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