After winning a well deserved Cannes Palm D'Or with "The wind that shakes the barley" (2006) that meet head-on the issue of the political issue of the IRA, auteur Ken Loach went on to tackle the social issue of illegal immigrants workers in London, with "It's a free world". While Loach, even when showing a degree of sympathy, always maintains an overriding objectivity, the IRA issue is one that is emotionally dramatic. "It's a free world", however, is presented with such detachment that it at times looks like a documentary, although it is by no means without its dramatic moments.
This gritty tale, with profoundly disturbing realism, is told through the protagonist Angie, superbly portrayed by Kierston Wareing (who, incidentally, bears a certain resemblance to Angie Dickenson, to those who have watched movies long enough to remember her). A single mother of a sixth-grader, Angie loses her job and ventures out on her own, teaming up with roommate Rose to form an agency that arranges work for immigrant workers, often on a daily basis. The scene alternates between her personal life and business undertaking. In the former case, we see the continuing struggle to carry out a mother's responsibility to the eleven-year-old son who is staying with her parents on a temporary basis. There is also a very brief depiction of a romance with a very nice man, a worker in her labour force supply. It is the latter, however, that is the focus of the movie.
With perfect division of work, Rose does all the administrative work while Angie, riding her bike in an image almost as cool as Arnold Schwarzenegger (you know which movies), goes around hangouts of immigrate workers to collect her work force. With repeated scenes, many of us in the uninformed audience are drawn into this realistically depicted world of daily logistic of assembling immigrant workers of all shape and size, roll calls and dispatching them to colour-coded trucks to send them off to various factories. Things seem to go fairly well until Angie (with a very reluctantly Rose) is lured into the lucrative business of using illegal immigrants.
Gradually, the movie also turns into a taxing test of the audiences' scruples. Without passing judgment, Director Loach presents the audience with meticulous details for them to form theirs. We see how at the outset, Angie seems very sympathetic to the workers, to the extents that a young chap gives her a small gift to thank her for finding him such a good job. We see how she provides temporary accommodation at their place (with mild objections from Rose) to an Iranian family of four in a state of financial desperation. On the other hand, there is an ominous undercurrent of troubles of delayed wage payments by irresponsible employers. Initially, while these cheated workers pressure Angie for their wages, it looks as if she is as much as victim as they are. Gradually, however, she begins to change, becoming an exploiter herself, unscrupulous to a point when Rose can no longer live with her own conscience and withdraws from the partnership. Physical violence and threats only serve to harden Angie. In the last, open-ended, scene we see her in a recruiting trip to Ukraine. Whether she will eventually get into serious trouble is no longer important. The pressing question, as the audience leaves the cinema, is what kind of a woman is Angie. There would undoubtedly be a wide spectrum of views, from sympathy to denunciation. But perhaps even that is not important. Maybe Angie is only a case which Loach employs to educate the audience of a cruel reality.
This gritty tale, with profoundly disturbing realism, is told through the protagonist Angie, superbly portrayed by Kierston Wareing (who, incidentally, bears a certain resemblance to Angie Dickenson, to those who have watched movies long enough to remember her). A single mother of a sixth-grader, Angie loses her job and ventures out on her own, teaming up with roommate Rose to form an agency that arranges work for immigrant workers, often on a daily basis. The scene alternates between her personal life and business undertaking. In the former case, we see the continuing struggle to carry out a mother's responsibility to the eleven-year-old son who is staying with her parents on a temporary basis. There is also a very brief depiction of a romance with a very nice man, a worker in her labour force supply. It is the latter, however, that is the focus of the movie.
With perfect division of work, Rose does all the administrative work while Angie, riding her bike in an image almost as cool as Arnold Schwarzenegger (you know which movies), goes around hangouts of immigrate workers to collect her work force. With repeated scenes, many of us in the uninformed audience are drawn into this realistically depicted world of daily logistic of assembling immigrant workers of all shape and size, roll calls and dispatching them to colour-coded trucks to send them off to various factories. Things seem to go fairly well until Angie (with a very reluctantly Rose) is lured into the lucrative business of using illegal immigrants.
Gradually, the movie also turns into a taxing test of the audiences' scruples. Without passing judgment, Director Loach presents the audience with meticulous details for them to form theirs. We see how at the outset, Angie seems very sympathetic to the workers, to the extents that a young chap gives her a small gift to thank her for finding him such a good job. We see how she provides temporary accommodation at their place (with mild objections from Rose) to an Iranian family of four in a state of financial desperation. On the other hand, there is an ominous undercurrent of troubles of delayed wage payments by irresponsible employers. Initially, while these cheated workers pressure Angie for their wages, it looks as if she is as much as victim as they are. Gradually, however, she begins to change, becoming an exploiter herself, unscrupulous to a point when Rose can no longer live with her own conscience and withdraws from the partnership. Physical violence and threats only serve to harden Angie. In the last, open-ended, scene we see her in a recruiting trip to Ukraine. Whether she will eventually get into serious trouble is no longer important. The pressing question, as the audience leaves the cinema, is what kind of a woman is Angie. There would undoubtedly be a wide spectrum of views, from sympathy to denunciation. But perhaps even that is not important. Maybe Angie is only a case which Loach employs to educate the audience of a cruel reality.