My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)

Director:

Stephen Frears

Writer:

Hanif Kureishi (written by)

Release Date:

April 1986 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Plot:

An ambitious Asian Briton and his white lover strive for success and hope, when they open up a glamorous laundromat.

Plot Keywords:

Thatcher | Mistress | London England | Politics | Laundromat

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 5 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

Saeed Jaffrey	...	Nasser Hussein
Roshan Seth	...	Ali Hussein
Daniel Day-Lewis	...	Johnny (as Daniel Day Lewis)
Gordon Warnecke	...	Omar Hussein
Derrick Branche	...	Salim N. Hussein
Rita Wolf	...	Tania N. Hussein
Souad Faress	...	Cherry N. Hussein
Richard Graham	...	Genghis
Shirley Anne Field	...	Rachel
Winston Graham	...	Jamaican One
Charu Bala Chokshi	...	Bilquis (as Charu Bala Choksi)
Dudley Thomas	...	Jamaican Two
Garry Cooper	...	Squatter
Neil Cunningham	...	Englishman
Persis Maravala	...	Nasser's Elder Daughter

Runtime:

97 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English | Urdu

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Argentina:18 | Iceland:16 | Australia:M | Portugal:M/16 | Finland:K-16 | France:U | South Korea:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:15 | USA:R | West Germany:16

Filming Locations:

245 Queenstown Road, Battersea, London, England, UK

Company:

Channel Four Films

Trivia:

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and A Room with a View (1985) both opened in New York on the same day, March 7, 1986. Both movies featured Daniel Day-Lewis in prominent and very different roles: in A Room with a View, he played a repressed, snobbish Edwardian upperclassman, while in Laundrette, he played a lower-class gay ex-skinhead in love with an ambitious Pakistani businessman in Thatcher's London. When American critics saw Day-Lewis, who was then virtually unknown in the US, in two such different roles on the same day, many (including Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times and Vincent Canby of The New York Times) raved about the talent it must have taken him to play such vastly different characters.

Quotes:

Papa: You must be getting married. Why else would you be dressed like an undertaker on holiday?
Omar: Going to Uncle's house, Papa. He's given me a car.
Papa: What? The brakes must be faulty. Tell me one thing because there's something I don't understand, though it must be my fault. How is it that scrubbing cars can make a son of mine look so ecstatic?
Omar: It gets me out of the house.
Papa: Don't get too involved with that crook. You've got to study. We are under siege by the white man. For us education is power.
[Omar shakes his head at his father]
[...]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Indiana Jones: Making the Trilogy (2003) (V)

multicultural and multisexual perspectives

Stephen Frears' film of Hanif Kureshi's script about the Pakistani and the NF punk who grew up as friends, and find themselves attracted to each other again. Gordon Warneke and Daniel Day-Lewis play the lovers in this intelligent movie which has a cheap British tinge but has some superb moments (Saeed Jaffrey as Warneke's uncle, ‘a professional businessman, not a professional Pakistani') within it.

Perhaps the longest-lasting image is the two boys in the back room of the launderette, splashing each other with water, and putting aside the political differences between them. Whether it truly makes its points about race and sexuality I'm not sure.