The Long Road Home.(immigrant themes and depictions in European movies)(Column)

In all the column inches spent on the growing gap between Europe and America, one crucial difference always gets missed: Europe doesn't have a "Godfather" trilogy. No saga of immigrants knitting themselves into modern society via corruption, ruthlessness and Old World loyalties. No patriarchal Marlon Brando glowering about family. No tale of the journey from docks and tenements to power, wealth and the American way.

Sure, Europeans have made immigrant movies before. "My Beautiful Laundrette" (1985), for one, depicted Pakistani immigrants "squeezing the tits of the system" in Margaret Thatcher's Britain. And as early as 1974, filmmaker Rainer W. Fassbinder explored African immigrants in Germany in "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul." But immigrant stories have never been central to European cinema the way the "Godfather" trilogy--not to mention "West Side Story" and even the recent "Gangs of New York"--have been to American film history.

Now that's changing. A new crop of European films are bringing immigrant characters into the foreground. In large part, of course, that reflects the changing place of immigrants in European society itself. Half a million illegal immigrants come to Europe every year, and debates are raging over their status and benefits. On celluloid, immigrants are no longer limited to serving as waiters, maids and criminals; they're now generating plots and playing starring roles. They're featured in such mainstream films as the bawdy Swedish comedy "Jalla! Jalla!" and the hit British thriller "Dirty Pretty Things." Last week producer Luc Besson opened the third in his phenomenally successful "Taxi" series, a smash-'em-up movie about a North African taxi driver in Marseilles who solves crimes his dim policeman buddy can't.

Even Hollywood is looking beyond American immigrants to Europe's own: Tom Cruise's production company, CW Productions, recently commissioned a script based on stories of refugees sneaking from France to Britain via the Chunnel. Slowly, what was invisible is now becoming visible. "Why haven't I seen you people before?" a white Briton asks a Nigerian immigrant in "Dirty Pretty Things." "Because we're the people you don't see," the Nigerian answers calmly. "We drive your cabs, and clean your rooms and suck your c--s."

Such films are resonating strongly with audiences. "Dirty Pretty Things," the story of Nigerian and Turkish refugees in London, was made by Stephen Frears, who also directed "My Beautiful Laundrette." Superbly acted by Briton Chiwetel Ejiofor and Audrey Tautou, the French star of "Amelie," the film chronicles Nigerian and Turkish migrants trying to dodge the twin threats of immigration authorities and criminals running a kidney-trafficking ring. The movie reveals a London unknown to those with Western passports: a city where desperate refugees opt to sell their kidneys, which are unceremoniously removed by quacks in cheap hotel rooms. Frears vividly evokes a neon-lit netherworld of minicab offices, greasy cafes, laundry rooms and the cracked linoleum of tenement flats. Though set in London, the film "could have taken place in five or six cities across Europe," says Frears.

The European immigrant genre has blossomed just as the film industry as a whole has become more internationalized. "Ten or 20 years ago, films were American, British, French or Indian films," notes Nick James, editor of the British Film Institute's monthly magazine, Sight and Sound. "Now it is an international cinema scene." Michael Winterbottom's "In This World," set for release this spring, is hardly a British film--despite its funding by the British Arts Council and the BBC. It follows the story of two Afghan refugees, Enayat and Jamal, making the treacherous journey from Peshawar to London. Shot in countries along the route--Iran, Turkey and ...