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Beautiful People

1999, Movie, R, 109 mins

Beautiful People: Review

BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
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Equal parts soap drama and ham-fisted morality tale, this scrappy film — made in the UK by Bosnian-born filmmaker Jasmin Dizdar — follows the intertwined lives of Londoners touched, directly or indirectly, by war in the former Yugoslavia. It opens with an obvious metaphor: a Serb (Dado Jehan) and a Croat (Faruk Pruti) from the same small village accidentally meet on a London bus; the resulting brawl sends both to the hospital, where they're forced to share a room. The hospital's overwhelmed obstetrician (Nicholas Farrell) is dealing simultaneously with his wife's abandonment and a refugee couple who don't want the baby they're about to have. Resident Portia Thornton (Charlotte Coleman), the socially conscious offspring of a supercilious aristocratic family, falls in love with a sweet-faced, penniless Bosnian patient (Edin Dzandzanovic) who's been hit by a car. Sullen teenage heroin addict Griffin (Danny Nussbaum) nods off in the airport (he's trying to get to Rotterdam so he can raise hell at a soccer match) and when he wakes up, he's been airlifted into a war zone atop a pallet of international relief supplies. Griffin's adventures are caught on tape by Jerry Higgins (Gilbert Martin), a veteran BBC cameraman who returns home rather the worse for the experience; Jerry's daughter attends the same school as the troubled obstetrician's hell-raising sons, and Griffin's dad is their principal. Dizdar's fragmented, overlapping story structure recalls films like CABARET BALKAN and THE WOUNDS, but lacks their bitter, lacerating surreality. And though he seems to be trying to strike a delicate balance between tragedy and life-affirming humor, subtlety isn't his strong suit. When Dizdar wants to tug the heartstrings, he brings on the orphaned blind child; when it's time for laughs, out come the harrumphing twits. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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