Welcome back to Movie Recaps.
Today I will show you a dark comedy from 2017, titled Two Pigeons.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
In the city of London, Hussein works as a very successful real estate agent that has
even won the employee of the month award.
This success is presented in his appearance, which he takes meticulous care of - every
morning he goes through a thorough grooming routine, and to go to the office he wears
classy expensive suits.
This is quite a contrast when compared to his apartment, which is incredibly messy:
blunt butts are everywhere and dirty dishes pile up in the sink.
He can be quite stingy when it's not about his looks too, going as far as reusing teabags.
There is one thing Hussein doesn't know however: there's a Spanish man called Orlan living
in the wall behind his closet, and he comes out whenever Hussein leaves the apartment.
Orlan is incredibly thin because he's barely surviving on the food he steals, and he doesn't
take much so his presence isn't noticed - for example, he takes a spoonful of cereal from
each box to make a whole bowl.
This doesn't stop him from doing all kinds of nasty things, though: he uses Hussein's
toothbrush in his own mouth, uses his towel to clean his armpits and groin and puts it
back without washing it, steals a t-shirt to wear, uses the dirty dishes then puts them
back on the pile, reads the same book Hussein's reading and tears off pages to wipe his butt
while he's in the bathroom, and even naps on his bed.
He only goes back to his hiding spot when Hussein returns.
One evening, while Hussein is watching a movie, he gets a call from his girlfriend, who is
coming back from her holiday to live with him and wants Hussein to pick her up at the
terminal.
Hussein obviously accepts and writes down the information on a sticky note that he puts
on the fridge.
After he goes to sleep, Orlan comes out again and does things like expertly practicing with
Hussein's nunchakus and changing the settings on his alarm clock.
Because of this change, the next morning, Hussein is late for work and rushes out of
the apartment.
Orlan comes out again and continues to pull his shenanigans: he empties in the toilet
the bottle he keeps in the closet to relieve himself, uses Hussein's old teabags to make
himself some tea and when he uses a little too much milk he refills the bottle with water,
changes the sticky note with one written by himself with slightly different information,
plays the guitar while singing in Spanish, smokes the pot blunts Hussein has left around
and watches the two pigeons on the window.
While doing so, he makes a funny voice pretending it's the birds talking and through this dialogue,
he reveals some of his past: once upon a time, he had a girlfriend, and when she got pregnant,
they decided they should find somewhere bigger to live in.
When Hussein returns in the evening, he finally begins cleaning the apartment to get it ready
for his girlfriend.
He also calls his dealer, Sonny, who brings him more pot and tells him about some racism
he's gone through while trying to get a job as an actor.
After Sonny leaves and Hussein goes to sleep, Orlan comes out again and this time, he writes
down Hussein's credit card information, putting away the little piece of paper safely in his
underwear.
The following day, Hussein finishes cleaning the apartment before he's called by his girlfriend,
who is angry because he hasn't come to pick her up on time.
Hussein doesn't understand what happened because he's been following what he wrote on the sticky
note, but he rushes out of the apartment to make things right.
As soon as he is out of the door, Orlan's shenanigans begin: he uses the mouthwash but
instead of spitting into the sink he spits it back into the bottle, changes into clean
clothes and tosses the dirty ones under the bed, and makes a trail of crumbs on the floor.
This time, when doing the voices for the pigeons, he mentions he and his girlfriend had been
looking at an apartment in London that was small and very expensive but a very nice agent
convinced them to give it a chance anyway.
He also leaves the window open.
When Hussein arrives with his girlfriend Mel, they find the pigeons inside the apartment,
who after eating all the crumbs they relieved themselves on Hussein's favorite chair.
After he gets them to fly out the window while wondering how it got opened in the first place,
Mel takes a look at the cupboards and scolds Hussein for his lack of real food and being
so stingy as to reuse teabags.
She goes out for groceries and later in the evening, she cooks a real meal instead of
ordering take-out like he often does.
Hussein does like the pasta she makes, but dinner ends up being an awkward affair when
they argue about the grocery money.
After they go to bed, Orlan disconnects Hussein's phone from the charger.
In the morning, Hussein brings breakfast to bed for Mel as an apology for the previous
day and promises her to take her somewhere nice later, Orlan hears all this while relieving
himself in a bottle.
The couple goes out in the evening after discussing the changes Mel wants to do to the apartment,
and Orlan decides to go all out tonight.
He takes a bath and wastes a lot of shampoo, shaves his armpits with Hussein's face razor,
makes himself some pasta, puts on new clothes, cuts one of Hussein's ties, throws Hussein's
diamond tie pin in the toilet, fills their various bottles of grooming products with
bleach and other cleaning products and spits into the mouthwash.
When he's done, he takes some cookies and a glass of milk with him to his hiding spot
right before the couple comes back, and he enjoys them while listening to them arguing
again, which ends with Mel leaving Hussein alone in bed.
The next day, Hussein starts noticing his body isn't feeling so well and argues with
Mel again when he can't find his tie pin.
Orlan comes out after they leave and almost gets caught when Mel comes back because she's
forgotten something.
Luckily for him, hiding among the closet clothes is enough not to be noticed since she's in
a hurry.
Then he comes out again and a new series of nasty pranks begin: he blows his nose with
Mel's panties, searches for adult movies on Mel's computer, and has a little moment to
himself when playing the guitar.
He also watches the pigeons again, and their dialogue this time reveals that the apartment
he and his girlfriend had chosen was given to a better offer after they had already signed
the contract and paid the deposit.
They also had already given their notice to their previous landlord, so they would have
to talk to him to be taken back or they would end up on the streets, but they couldn't stop
worrying about the baby.
Days pass and the couple gets in more and more arguments caused by Orlan's shenanigans.
Hussein thinks it was Mel that cut his tie and disconnected his phone the other day,
and Mel thinks he's the one that watched adult movies on her laptop and came on her panties.
Both of them obviously deny the other's accusations, even commenting how a ghost couldn't possibly
watch adult movies on the computer.
After they go to sleep very apart from each other, Orlan takes the chance to take a huge
dump in their toilet and doesn't flush it.
In the morning, this causes another argument - they blame each other for the surprise in
the toilet, and Mel also thinks Hussein has been using her shampoo.
This time, their fight escalates to the point where Mel decides to break up with him, telling
him to go to work and promising she won't be there when he returns.
Orlan comes out as soon as Mel is gone, incredibly happy at this turn of events.
Today's pranks include cutting his nails and hiding the toenails under the pillow, urinating
all over the cluttery, cleaning his butt with the toothbrush, and reading Hussein's book
some more.
When Hussein comes back, he uses the cluttery without suspecting anything and is disgusted
to find the toenails under his pillow.
Sometime later, when Sonny comes to bring him more pot, Hussein tells him a very distorted
version of the fight, claiming he was the one that broke up with Mel and she begged
to stay.
He also thinks there may be a ghost in the apartment because the surprise he had found
in the toilet couldn't be a woman's.
Days continue to pass and Hussein keeps on using his things without knowing what Orlan
does to them when he's gone.
He cleans his ears with the toothbrush, drops snot into the mouthwash, and licks the bottle
of pills Hussein has been taking because he continues to feel unwell.
One night, Orlan is in the kitchen, smashing a bunch of aspirins and throwing them in the
electric kettle when Hussein wakes up and comes over to make some tea.
Orlan saves himself just in time by climbing on top of the cupboards, where he easily fits
thanks to his skeletal body.
He's getting more and more daring these days, so before returning to his hiding spot, he
comes closer to a sleeping Hussein and sniffs him, then he draws a male member on the misted
mirror, messes with Hussein's digital schedule, and throws every single toiler paper roll
out the window.
Hussein is woken up in the morning by a phone call from his boss, and he tells him he won't
go to work today because he feels awful so he'll send him the schedule for him to cover
it instead.
Before he even gets to hang up, he finds himself rushing to the bathroom to throw up in the
toilet.
That morning he also gets a surprise delivery: it's a freezer that Orlan ordered with Hussein's
credit card.
The delivery guys say they can't take it back because Hussein is a dummy that signed the
sheet before even looking at what it is, so if he wants to send it back, he must call
the depot directly.
Now the huge box sits in the middle of his living room, taking up a lot of space.
After cleaning off the drawing on the mirror, Hussein discovers he's out of toilet paper,
and since he can't go out because he's sick, he calls Sonny and asks him to bring him some.
Sonny gets angry when Hussein is unhappy because the paper isn't the soft kind instead of being
grateful, and tells him he needs to put himself together.
Hussein says he will try.
When Hussein starts feeling a bit better, he tries to call Mel, who won't answer him,
and finally leaves the apartment again.
Orlan comes out and sees the freezer, so he starts dancing around the apartment in celebration
of how well his messing up of Hussein's life is going.
One night, he gets even riskier and takes the blankets off a sleeping Hussein's body
to then climb on the bed and cut his own hand with a knife, making it bleed on the mattress
and Hussein's body to make it look like he's been bleeding.
He also grabs Hussein's phone and takes many pictures of his own member, which he sends
to some of the contacts.
The following morning, Hussein finds the blood and gets worried about the possibility of
cancer so he calls a doctor to ask for an urgent appointment.
At that moment, he gets a call from his boss, who gives him an official warning for having
sent him the wrong schedule.
A couple of hours later, his boss shows up at his apartment to demand an explanation
on why Hussein sent him pictures of a male member.
Hussein tries to deny it, but his boss doesn't believe him and fires him on the spot.
As he goes back inside, Hussein finds the fridge open and water running in the kitchen
sink, the bathroom sink and the bath.
Getting worried about intruders, he grabs his nunchakus then moves the mattress off
the bed and opens the closet, but finds nothing.
He also checks his phone and gets angry when he confirms the nasty pictures are there,
so he grabs a knife and opens the freezer box.
Afterward, he calls Mel to see if she was the one that bought it, which of course she
denies; and Hussein also calls a locksmith to add extra locks to his door.
When he's done, he falls asleep on his chair with his nunchakus and a knife in hand just
in case.
Orlan comes out then and after opening the fridge, he tosses a piece of paper at Hussein,
running back to his hiding spot before Hussein wakes up and gets worried about intruders
when he finds the fridge open again.
He searches the house, calling out for anyone there to show themselves, but finds nothing
and decides to go to bed, weapons still in his hands.
Orlan comes out again and after reading for a while, he says hi to the pigeons.
His dialogue for the birds this time tells us that he and his girlfriend weren't able
to go back to their old house, so they had to stay at a B&B, but his girlfriend was getting
sick and this couldn't be good for the baby, who was due in three weeks.
Orlan cries at the memory before going into hiding again.
The following morning, Hussein talks to his mom and tries to make her understand that
the naughty pictures she got weren't from him.
He is still feeling unwell and gets even more frustrated when he finds out his book is missing
some pages.
His apartment starts to get messy again, and Hussein also begins talking to the pigeons,
mentioning they're the only company he has nowadays.
Not wanting to cook, he fills the freezer with frozen pizzas, and moving is getting
difficult as well so he takes his tv to his bedroom so he can stay in bed.
Orlan stays hidden under his bed and eats the cookies Hussein leaves around.
One night he even goes as far as grabbing a knife and thinking of stabbing Hussein but
stops himself just in time.
Being unemployed means Hussein is quickly running out of money so he calls his parents
for help, but they only tell him to get a job.
When Sonny visits him again, he's surprised by how nasty the apartment has become, even
worse than the old days, but Hussein isn't in the mood for chatting as always, he tells
him to drop the pot and leave.
Sonny is hurt and angry by this attitude coming from someone that he considered a friend but
does as asked.
One afternoon, while he's in bed touching himself to some exercise videos, Hussein accidentally
drops the remote control on the floor and when he reaches out to grab it, he discovers
Orlan under his bed.
There's no point in hiding anymore, so Orlan comes out and starts insulting Hussein until
he has him cornered in the bathroom.
He starts explaining that Hussein had been the bastard agent that canceled their deal
on an apartment, leaving them on the streets.
The stress of the situation caused both the baby and his girlfriend to die during birth,
and he blames Hussein for it.
But instead of apologizing or showing sympathy, Hussein tells him he was just following orders,
so he's as much of a victim as Orlan is.
This angers Orlan, who proceeds to close the door behind him as he thinks of the right
punishment for Hussein.
Afterward, Orlan cleans the entire apartment, shaves off his beard, and puts on one of Hussein's
expensive suits which don't fit him very well.
He also puts out some bread crumbs on top of the freezer and the window for the pigeons,
and after saying goodbye to them, he finally leaves the building, taking with him two big
bags of trash.
Meanwhile, back in the apartment, the pigeons eat the crumbs on top of the freezer, which
has been sealed up with tape, while Hussein calls his mom to tell her he's been stuck
inside the freezer by some crazy old man and he needs her help.
However, his mom doesn't take him seriously and hangs up on him.