The Agony of Bosnia, Transported to the Streets of London

Bosnian-born filmmaker Jasmin Dizdar sets the tone for his bravura allegory “Beautiful People” right at the start, as two men, one a shaggy Croat (Faruk Pruti), the other a swarthy Serb (Dado Jehan), recognize each other on a crowded London bus. Neighbors-turned-enemies back in their native village, they are swiftly at each other’s throats. Dizdar brings a caustically comic point of view toward this violent encounter that will run through his corrosive yet ultimately tender vision of a vast multicultural contemporary metropolis. It is from the perspective of London that Dizdar, in turn, drives home to an all-too-indifferent West the agony of Bosnia.

With the confidence born of a bristling, passionate conviction and imagination, coupled with a scabrous absurdist sense of humor, Dizdar, in his feature debut, swiftly introduces us to several groups of highly disparate Londoners whose lives will intersect randomly yet dramatically by the time the picture reaches its stunning, sweeping climax. There are echoes of “MASH” in one key and unexpected sequence, and Dizdar perceives the possibilities in chaos, as did Lina Wertmuller in “Seven Beauties.”

Among the families we follow are the Thorntons, a snobbish aristocratic family, verging on caricature and headed by a veteran calcified Member of Parliament. Their medical student daughter Portia (Charlotte Coleman) will end up treating and falling in love with a brand-new Bosnian emigre, Pero (Edin Dzandzanovic), struck by a car as he runs through busy streets, the result of a paranoid misunderstanding. Meanwhile, Griffin Midge (Danny Nussbaum), slacker son of a schoolteacher (Roger Sloman), who has given up on him, and his dithery wife (Heather Tobias), has taken up hard drugs with his really rotten pals Jim (Steve Sweeney) and Bigsy (Jay Simpson), who think nothing of beating and robbing a youth to get enough money to take off to Rotterdam for a soccer match.

Down the street from the Midges’ comfortable row house is the home of Dr. Mouldy (Nicholas Farrell), a sweet-natured, attractively rumpled National Health Service doctor so overworked and bleary his wife leaves him. As heartbroken as he is, he nevertheless acts kindly to a Bosnian refugee (Walentine Giorgiewa), pregnant through rape and therefore not wanting the baby fathered by an enemy. Dr. Mouldy’s sons go to the same school attended by the young daughter of an artist (Siobhan Redmond) of more flamboyance than talent and a celebrated BBC-TV war correspondent from Glasgow (Gilbert Martin) determined to plunge into the thick of battle in Bosnia.

Dizdar, who has lived in London since 1989, is unflaggingly inventive in where he takes his large cast. He hits hard in his depiction of both the horrors of war and the perils and hardships of immigrants in London struggling to survive in the face of language barriers, poverty, prejudice and injustice, and above all, a collective obtuseness and indifference directed not just at Bosnians but all refugees. Obviously, “Beautiful People,” with little adjustment, could just as easily be set in Paris, New York or Los Angeles.

A film that lives up to its ambitiousness in all its aspects, “Beautiful People” is suffused in an anger that gradually gives way to an aura of affectionate reconciliation, a tone that rightly smacks of just enough wishful thinking to stave off accusations of sentimentality yet raise the possibility of hope. The timeless point that Dizdar makes with so much zest--and no less feeling--is simply that it can be hard to hate those so seemingly different from you once you get to know them.

* MPAA rating: R, for drug use, language and some violent content. Times guidelines: Be warned that no holds are barred in the depiction of the casualties of warfare or the brutality that can accompany racism.

‘Beautiful People’

Carlotte Coleman: Portia Thornton

Edin Dzandzanovic: Pero Guzina

Danny Nussbaum: Griffin Midge

Gilbert Martin: Jerry Higgins

Nicholas Farrell: Dr. Mouldy

A Trimark Pictures and Tall Stories presentation. Writer-director Jasmin Dizdar. Producer Ben Woolford. Executive producers Roger Shannon, Ben Gibson. Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd. Editor Justin Krish. Music Garry Bell. Costumes Louise Page. Production designer Jon Henson. Art director Cristina Casali. Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes.

Exclusively at the Westside Pavilions Cinema, 10800 W. Pico Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 475-0202; the Town Center 4, Bristol at Anton, South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, (714) 751-4194 or (714) 777-FILM (No. 086); and the Academy, 1000 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 229-9400.