Summary
Okwe, a Nigerian immigrant, stands in an airport in London, asking people if they want a cab. Various people pass him by, when eventually he finds two businessmen who want a ride. Eventually he goes back to the cab station, where his boss calls him back to a back room and pulls his pants down. Apparently, the boss has a venereal disease, and because Okwe was a doctor back in Nigeria, he can examine it and treat it.
Okwe does not want to treat his boss, but when his boss tells him he will get him a bunch of jobs driving in South London, the cabbie agrees. "Okay, I'll see what I can do," Okwe says. His boss tries to kiss him, but he leaves.
After leaving the station, he goes to the Baltic Hotel, where he works at night. There, he puts on his uniform and gets to work at the front desk. A little after 2AM, he gets a call about room service, but the kitchen is closed. At 5AM, he swaps out security video cassettes. We see a woman, Senay Gelik, a Turkish Muslim immigrant, looking up at the security camera, before intentionally dropping her key on the ground for Okwe to pick up. He asks to take her to lunch, but she tells him she cannot.
As Okwe goes back to the front desk, the bellhop tells Okwe that he knows he is close with Senay, but Okwe insists that he only rents her couch. They discuss the fact that she is Muslim, when Okwe sends the bellhop away because someone is at the door.
Suddenly, a prostitute comes down the stairs, greets Okwe, and guesses that he is from Africa somewhere. He lights her cigarette and she tells him that he might want to send someone to check on the room. He asks if there's a problem, and she simply says, "How should I know? I don't exist."
He goes upstairs to the room and checks the bathroom, where the toilet is overflowing. He takes a wire hanger and tries to unclog it, when suddenly the toilet fills with blood. Alarmed, he takes a trash bag and pulls out the bloody object, a human heart. He takes the heart in the bag and brings it downstairs to the front desk, where the bellhop tells him to hide whatever he's found in case their manager, Sneaky, finds out that he's stealing from the hotel.
The bellhop is interrupted by someone calling from outside looking for assistance. Sneaky, or "Juan," soon arrives at the hotel and tells two workers to clean up some dumpsters in the parking garage. As he comes into the office, Sneaky whistles and takes out a nip of liquor, downing it. Okwe comes into the office and shows Sneaky the heart, and Sneaky simply laughs. "What the fuck do you know about hearts, Okwe?" Sneaky asks, skeptically. Okwe tells him that he thinks they should call the police.
As he dials the police, Sneaky alludes to the fact that Okwe never told him his full name or where he is from, threatening to tell the police that he is undocumented. Smiling, he hands the phone to Okwe, but Okwe declines. Sneaky takes the heart and offers Okwe some money, but Okwe declines this as well.
Okwe goes to Senay's apartment and lies down on her couch. He is unable to sleep and goes to a crematorium at the hospital, where his friend, Guo Yi, is cleaning blood off an examining table. They sit down to play chess, when Guo Yi tells him that working his two jobs is going to hurt him. He then notices that Okwe has already won the chess game, and says, "Come on Okwe, don't be nice, it makes it worse."
Guo Yi gives Okwe a book, which he calls "medicine for your soul." Okwe tells Guo Yi that he found a human heart in one of the hotel rooms, which alarms Guo Yi. "I'm only telling you because you are a rational man, maybe there's an explanation," Okwe says.
As Guo Yi burns clothes in an incinerator, they brainstorm possible explanations for the heart. Guo Yi posits that perhaps it was a heart attack, but Okwe insists that it was a healthy heart. When Okwe asks Guo Yi to continue considering it with him, Guo Yi alludes to the fact that he is a certified refugee, while Okwe is an illegal, and warns him against getting too involved in something so shady. As another body is brought in, Guo Yi tells Okwe he will get him his pills in a minute and advises him, "Stick to people who can be helped."
At a cafe, a man gives Okwe a bundle of some kind of herb, when Okwe spots Senay outside and goes after her. He gives her her key and as she goes to her apartment, he asks her why she only has one key to her apartment. "At the hotel we are friends. I'm not different there!" he says, indignantly, but she goes into her apartment and tells him to wait five minutes before knocking.
We see Okwe cutting garlic with a small razor in Senay's kitchen, which he puts down next to some other vegetables. As Senay draws a bath, Okwe asks her if she cleaned on the fifth floor of the hotel the other night, specifically in 510. After noticing that the bath isn't working, Senay comes out of the bathroom and turns off the water in the sink, saying that it is disrupting the bathwater. Okwe hands her a letter, which she takes into the bathroom.
Analysis
The film follows the life of an immigrant trying to carve out a life in a new country, in spite of the restrictions placed upon him because of his immigrant status. Okwe is an accomplished doctor in Nigeria, but in London, he must pick up two menial jobs—one as a cab driver and the other as a front desk attendant at a hotel. His expertise and credentials do not earn him an equivalent life in England, which we learn quickly.
The film is concerned primarily with looking at the characters who exist on the margins of society and otherwise go unnoticed. Firstly, its protagonist is a cabbie and a front desk clerk; both occupations are about invisibility and service. Secondly, he is an immigrant, which puts him even more on the margins of the culture in which he lives. All of the characters with which he comes into contact—the bellhop, Senay, his cabbie boss, the prostitute—are people who are seen but barely heard. This particular dynamic is exemplified in the moment that Okwe asks the prostitute a question and she replies coyly, "How should I know? I don't exist." None of the characters quite "exist" in the eyes of the society they live in, and must sneak through the shadows, trying to get by.
Matters get considerably more suspenseful and unusual when Okwe finds a human heart clogging the toilet in a bathroom upstairs. After meeting the charming and vague prostitute (Juliette), Okwe goes to investigate what he thinks is just a normal clog in the toilet, and is horrified when the water fills with blood. The image of Okwe pulling a heart out of the toilet in a fine hotel is an evocative and disturbing one, the sign of scary things to come.
Making matters even more complicated is the fact that Okwe's boss, Sneaky, has no interest in investigating the issue of the heart any further. While Okwe sees the heart as evidence of foul play, Sneaky insists that it is not something worth looking into, and even threatens to reveal Okwe's status as an undocumented immigrant if he goes to the police. Sneaky's apparent complicity in the mystery of the heart in the toilet piques Okwe's curiosity even more.
In contrast to the more disturbing and mysterious event of the heart in the toilet is Okwe's budding relationship with the Turkish Muslim immigrant Senay. Senay is beautiful and clearly Okwe admires her, but she maintains a chilly attitude towards him. Because of her religion, she is very conservative about their friendship, barely wanting to spend time together. Yet in spite of her better judgment, a compelling intimacy and an unexpected domesticity develops between the two of them.
