by MATTHEW HAYS

Stephen Frears insists he doesn't have a thing for outsiders. "No, no, really," he says through a thick British accent. It's kind of hard to believe. This is the same man who brought us My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987), two of the most crucial British films to come out of the Thatcher era. Both movies were scripted by Hanif Kureishi and brought beautifully textured portraits of culture clashes that occurred in an often-unhappy U.K.

Now, after various other film projects, he's back to the immigrant experience. With Dirty Pretty Things, Frears focuses on the lives of a group of illegal immigrants in Britain, all of whom are desperate to remain in the country, working for a pittance in the hotel biz. When times get even tougher, key characters are tempted to sell their organs on the black market for a passport and a few bucks.

Despite another excellent outsider film, Frears is maintaining, straight-faced, that he's not necessarily drawn to outsider stories. "If you say so," he laughs. "It's unconscious. I can see it's happened too many times to be coincidence. I can't plead innocence, but I don't consciously look for stories about outsiders, I just read scripts and I either like something or I don't."

As well as race and immigration, Frears and Kureishi also touched on homosexuality, bringing radically outré representations of gay people to the big screen (think the necking session - starring a then-largely-unknown Daniel Day-Lewis - in Laundrette). "I recognize that I think fighting against the world holds a certain sense of vitality for me," concedes Frears. "It seems to help me. Laundrette changed the world, really. It was things that I'd seen in the early '60s when I worked at the Royal Court in London. That was the first time I'd come across all these gay boys there, who seemed to be having a wonderful time. Who knows how it all ended, but they all talked so outrageously, I thought they must be having a better time than I'm having! So when I read the script with the boys kissing in the laundrette, it reminded me of that.

"Things have certainly changed since then. I don't know why it made such a furore. I suppose because it hadn't been seen as a source of joy before, two men kissing. It had only been done as a source of tragedy."

Dirty Pretty Things does present a shift in terms of minority perspective. "This really has nothing to do with empire. This has to do with the haves and have-nots, with people who are simply desperate to get into the U.K."

The film has been garnering raves on the fest circuit, where it premiered last season. "It's very gratifying," says Frears. "But I just finished the film about a month ago, so I'm in a bit of a daze about it all. I guess it'll take a while for it all to sink in."

Dirty Pretty Things opens Friday, Sept. 5

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