Review of Dirty Beautiful (2015) by Alex H — 20 Dec 2018

"Dirty Beautiful" is as authentic as they come and as a fan of love stories, this movie way 100% for me.

Given that this is a movie about a struggling writer and the woman who shakes up his life, it would be easy to call Tim Bartell's piece overly familiar from the logline alone, but truly it's anything but. David, a charming and bumbling writer, sucks at love and wants more than anything to have someone to take care of. Kat, a rowdy and tragic woman off the street, just needs someone to take care of her. In some ways, they're the perfect match... but mostly they're a hurricane that tears one another down every other moment. It's an excellent and honest depiction of a toxic relationship and yet, one you can't help but sort of root for through it all. What's more, it sheds some much needed light on how homelessness, prostitution and male power dynamics are all portrayed on screen, never fun of these important issues even though this dramedy does tend to lean more comedic most of the time. Whether folks will like the ending is hard to say... I know I did, but I guess it depends on each viewer's relationship with love more or less.

Outside of the charming story and the all too real struggle of #writerlife depicted on screen, this film also boasts some really, really beautiful cinematography. It's just a super clean looking film with some excellent framing that helps to spice up what would otherwise be a simple single-cam shoot. Top that off with solid doses of awkward humor throughout and an on point score, the final product is something well worth a watch and more than that, an important part of modern cinema.