To the outsider, London is a sightseer's theme park, a rich assembly of landmarks and historic buildings, where blue plaques chronicle the passing of time right back to the Middle Ages. But like any modern city, London is a paradox; its true-blue heritage is supported by tourist money and, in many cases, employs personnel from all four corners of the world, working within various changing shades of legality. Such people are the oil that keeps London running smoothly, and the further one delves into the city's economy, the more one finds these invisible people, the un-thanked labour we pass on the streets every day but whose stories remain unknown and untold.

Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things, however, is a strange and gripping thriller that takes place on the side of London that the tourist never sees. The story was conceived several years ago by writer Steven Knight, one of the brains behind the hit TV quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, who took the idea to his long-standing collaborator Paul Smith at Celador Productions.

"Steve is a man of great talent and vision," says Smith, who executive produced the film, "and he has, over the years, been responsible for creating game-show formats - very successful ones - comedy scripts and situation comedies. In the mid-1990s, though, he turned his hand to writing screenplays, and he came up with what a story that was then called Hotels And Dirty Pretty Things.   

Robert Jones and Jones Company came on board as producers to work with Celador and the BBC and to develop the screenplay further. The first draft of the script was passed to Stephen Frears, who was immediately taken by the concept of the film. Having established himself in the 80s with such acclaimed and unusual London-based movies as My Beautiful Laundrette and Prick Up Your Ears, Frears seemed a natural choice for the story when the draft was polished and finalised.

"If you're after something that's fresh and original" explains Frears, "it's not surprising that you end up in the immigrant community. It is new - it wasn't there when I was a child. If you make films of Edwardian novels then you don't deal with that, but if your taste is for more modern things, that's where you'll go, because it's where the biggest changes in British society - well, London society - are happening. That's what's going on in modern British politics."

But what appealed to the filmmakers most was that the film deals with such issues in a different way. It is, after all, a thriller with a political subtext, and not the other way round. "Dirty Pretty Things is not a conventional, standard story by any means," says Smith, "and that, if anything, is its strength. It's dark, and it tells a story about a part of London we'd rather not admit exists, but in some way we all benefit from whenever we visit certain hotels and restaurants. And yet we ignore those people, because they're in the shadows. So it also has quite a message in it, about the exploitation of people who find themselves illegally in the UK and are forced, against their will in some cases, to carry out jobs they would prefer not to do. Aside from that, though, it's a story with lots of twists and turns which will have audiences on the edge of their seats."

Adds Frears, "It's really about the underside of London, the rather grubby side of life, where people are forced into certain situations because of their economic circumstances. It's like a rather gothic horror story. But it's also about an African man living in London, which is quite an unusual theme."

casting
Indeed, the nature of the script meant that Frears would be casting a London-based film with a largely non-white and non-British cast.

"For the lead, I had to cast an African," says Frears, "and I remember saying to the producers, 'Look, you can either cast an American - you can go to Denzel Washington or those other great African-American actors - or you can do it with an European-African actor.' That seemed to me to be the right way to go, which meant dealing with someone who wasn't a big Hollywood star."

Frears approached the casting of Okwe with a trepidation that surprises him now. At the time, he felt that the role was a huge task, since the character appears on the first page of the script and practically every page to the last. He had been impressed by Ejiofor in a stage production of Blue/Orange but, mistakenly believing the actor to be much younger than he really is, and hadn't been convinced that he was right for the role. So he asked him to read key scenes on videotape.

"Having read the script, and having spoken to Steven about it, I organised a private screen test, which I shot at home with some friends," says Ejiofor. "I did about three or four sequences, so he could see it and ascertain whether that was the way he wanted to go. The truth is, there's a lot that's variable about Okwe, so I was honing down something instinctual and specific."

Although Frears continued to audition other actors, there was something about Ejiofor's subtle approach that piqued Frears' curiosity.

"He's a rather impressive, dignified and thoughtful man," recalls the director, "and slowly, he rose to the top of the heap. In retrospect, I was being rather dozy in being so cautious, but the part of Okwe is a big responsibility. So I cast him, and afterwards I was thinking, 'Christ, why didn't I realise? This man is absolutely phenomenal!'"

Like Frears, Ejiofor was aware that the film would require a restrained and measured performance to sustain both the drama and the tension.
"With Okwe," says the actor, "there is so much that is internal. There is such an internal struggle all the way through the film, which can be quite complicated to play. But what makes that journey easier is the fact that the character is so stable in its structure. There are hooklines, and as long as you hold onto whatever is the nerve centre of Okwe, being silent represents its own power, because there is so much that goes on behind the eyes."

"The main themes of the film are isolation and survival instincts," he continues. "Most of the main characters are, in some ways, totally isolated. They're isolated as people, they're isolated in terms of circumstance. In Okwe's case, he's an illegal immigrant and variously ignored by the indigenous populations - apart from governmental forces, who want to arrest him. He is also isolated because he's pretending to be something he's not. He's playing a character, and that's another theme of the piece: role-playing. In certain circumstances, people will take on another persona in order to survive from moment to moment."

With his leading man in place, Frears began to assemble the supporting cast, and his thoughts turned to extending the search outside the UK. This brought him to French actress Audrey Tautou, star of the Oscar-nominated crossover hit Amelie, who plays the part of Senay.

"Minorities are beginning to appear more and more in films," says Frears, "and I was very aware that last year, actors like Benicio Del Toro, Javier Bardem and Don Cheadle were really starting to make their mark. So the idea of not using what you might call 'conventional' actors was interesting to me, and gradually the idea of casting Audrey surfaced. I think somebody might have even told me she was actually Franco-Turkish, which intrigued me, although, obviously, that turned out not to be true!"

Strangely, Frears cast her before seeing Amelie, in which she plays a quirky, lovelorn waitress.

"She was very nervous about that film and she didn't want me to see it," he explains. "It's very, very technically clever and very eccentric - but, because she would be playing a human being in this film, I suppose she didn't want me to be distracted. I thought she'd be good as it was, but then I saw the film and she was absolutely wonderful. That's when I realised, 'Oh God, this is real class!' I remember just looking in disbelief - I couldn't believe I'd got my hands on this girl! She's sensational."

But Tautou remains modest about her reasons for downplaying Amelie, despite - or rather because of - that film's warm international reception. "When we met for the first time," she says, "Stephen told me he hadn't seen Amelie. And I said to myself, 'That film is so special, and the character is so specific, if he sees it he might not be able to imagine me as Senay.' I was also worried that he might have heard too many good things about me - I was afraid his expectations would be too high."

Although they share some similarities - like Amelie, Senay is a romantic at heart and someone who prefers to blend into the background - Tautou is careful to make the distinction that her character in Dirty Pretty Things is a much tougher proposition that audiences may expect. "For example," says the actress. "Senay wants to go to New York because it's her dream, but she's prepared to do anything to get it. She wants to have a different life than the one she's got. But I don't think Senay is a survivor, in the tragic sense of the word - I don't think, 'Poor girl.' I think she is strong, because she has to be strong to leave what she leaves behind. She's not a hero, she's just a modern young woman who just wants to live her own life. Even if this movie has some romanticism, it's not false."

Unwittingly, Frears also cast against type with the part of Sneaky, which went to Spanish actor Sergi Lopez. In keeping with the film's multicultural themes, Lopez came to prominence in a series of films for French director Manuel Poirier, playing light-hearted roles that seem far removed from the amoral Sneaky. In fact, such was Lopez's standing that when Dominik Moll cast him as the villain in his Hitchcockian thriller With a Friend Like Harry, his fans were shocked.

"The majority of my characters have been good guys," says Lopez, "and Harry… was the first time they asked me to play someone who wasn't very nice. And suddenly, people began to think that I played only bad guys. But I don't really feel there's much of a difference. It's very difficult to say that one person's good and another's bad. So I was very happy to be offered the role in Harry…, because that opened up more possibilities for me."

As he rehearsed for the part, Lopez says he found himself more and more taken with Sneaky's foibles, however terrible. "He is a very, very funny character," he grins. "In every way. He's a very happy person, and a very charming person, but he doesn't have a lot of scruples. He has no friends, nobody. He just loves money - and, of course, himself."

These three characters form the central triangle in the ensuing thriller, with a poignant love affair blossoming between Okwe and Senay. "On various levels, Okwe is totally blown away by Senay," says Ejiofor. "There's a possibility that he really didn't think people could be like her, and he's so charmed by her that it renders him defenceless against her. I don't think he has a choice in the matter - he will always protect and defend her, just because he finds her so incredibly special. He admires her strength of purpose and her charm, and he recognises that she's as vulnerable as he is."

This is no ordinary love story, however, and much like the characters themselves, the sexual tension is always somewhere below the surface. "Audrey and I looked at our scenes together, initially, as sort of a play fight," says Ejiofor, "a play fight that grows into something more tenable and fortified over time. I think that's the nature of their relationship: they oppose each and find they have nothing but affection for each other."

Adds Tautou, "My favourite scene is the one where Okwe and my character have our first lunch together. I liked this scene from the moment I read the script, and I liked it because Senay doesn't show her feelings. In some way she is very naïve, but in other ways she is proud and strong. For me, it was really a pleasure."

Under threat from the immigration office, who would like to deport them, and also Sneaky, who uses their illegal status against them, Okwe and Senay find support from some unexpected quarters. First is prostitute Juliette (Sophie Okonedo), an outwardly tough hooker with a surprisingly gentle nature. "She's quite scary and loud - she takes the piss out of everyone, basically," says Okonedo. "Everything's got to be fun, which is how she gets through this crappy job that she does, by finding humour in the darkest situations. At first she comes and goes, but towards the end she becomes much more involved.

"Juliette's been through the mill," she adds. "She's been battered by life and she doesn't want to see Senay get spoilt the same way, so she feels for her. I mean, there's definitely a softer side to Juliette. There always is to people who are loud and brash and scary. It's just a front, to get through the day. And as for Okwe, Juliette just thinks he's really different. She really likes him, because he's not like all the other men she knows. He seems so centred and true, which is not what she's used to. He doesn't want anything from her, whereas most of the men she comes across do. He'd be the ideal boyfriend - if she had one!"

Finally there's Ivan the doorman (Zlatko Buric), a man of few words who guards the entrance with an almost mystical authority. "Ivan is a doorman at the hotel but he's also the doorman to another world," says Buric. "It's as though he's taking people's souls from one world to the other. And getting money for it. He has this view that money is all that matters. So he's a very realistic person. Ivan and Okwe stand on two different levels. Okwe is an exception in this world, a man who sees through money, but Ivan is absolutely different. I know he's bad, but I've started to like him. Maybe sometimes he abuses Okwe's trust, but I think he has a lot of affection for Okwe. Although he thinks Okwe is very naïve and has no chance of surviving in this world." He laughs. "No chance.

 
Bringing the characters to life