My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)

Powerful

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I rewatched this movie for the second time and I still can't believe it was made in 1985 and it's still as relevant today as it was in the 80's. This movie was ahead of its time and is too underrated. I absolutely love the take on Omar and Johnny, and their blossoming romance among the other plot. I just love how they don't bother explaining about their relationship, it' just is there, like in many movies with romantic plot lines. Great movie, everyone should see this. And I loved the ending.

I have to say Daniel Day-Lewis did a great job playing a punk. Although he didn't seem to have a very good fashion sense, I thought the jacket he had on was too bright. Anyways at least that was only one hiccup out of him!This film tells you a lot of British Indian immigrants and the racism involving it. It can be quite scary to have someone wanting to harm you because of the way you were born to be. Also, I found it scary that Omar's cousin hurt him like he was his flesh and blood. How could you do that to someone especially part of your family members?! I tell ya, he always freaked me out whenever he appeared in the movie! Thankfully, he apologised and never did anything horrible to Omar again!I thought everyone involved in this film did a pretty grand job, hats off to you all!

Omar (Gordon Warnecke) is a Pakistani boy living in London caring for his sick father. His father gets his uncle to get him a job. Omar starts by washing cars but ends up buying a falling apart launderette from his uncle. He also meets his ex Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis) a punk British kid. They refurbish the place and start having sex. But Johnny's friends HATE Pakistanis and the class differences between Omar and Johnny threaten to tear them apart.This is often called a gay movie but I disagree. Yes there are two gay characters in it but their love story is just one of many elements. It deals mostly with the war between the British and Pakistani immigrants. The love story consists only of a few long and incredibly uncomfortable kisses. Both of the actors are str8 and (by all accounts) hated the kissing scenes. It comes through clearly on screen. That aside there lots of drama and comedy about Omar and his family and Johnny and his friends. This takes place in 1985 Britain and was originally shot for British TV so I didn't get all the cultural references and know very little about British life back then. Still I was able to pretty much follow it. The acting is very good by the supporting cast but the two leads don't really work. Warnecke is way too naïve to be believable and when he tries to act like he's tough it's laughable. Day-Lewis is VERY badly miscast as a punk. He was about 27 when he did this and looks older. He's a great actor NOW but back then had a lot to learn. Still this was an interesting comedy/drama about 1985 Britain.

Under the iron curtain of Thatcherism in the 1980s, UK veteran Stephen Frears' fourth feature film is an ethnic barrier-breaker in the world queer cinema, much as its fervid confrontations between races and social classes, the central closeted romance between an ex-punk Johnny (Day-Lewis) and a Pakistani Briton Omar (Warnecke) is nurtured with robust intimacy and élan. Enclosed by a synth-pop heavy pulse, the film starts with Johnny and his gang being expelled from their squatting apartment by some heavies, a similar territory Daniel Day-Lewis would retread in IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER (1993), then cutting to introduce another protagonist, Omar, a college dropout sent to work for his uncle Nasser (Jaffrey) by his bed-ridden father (Seth), a disillusioned idealist and leftist), in Nasser's car-washing lot, Omar meets Nasser's business partner Salim (Branche), a menacing and overbearing bully who conducts some seedy business and Nasser's mistress Rachel (Anne Field), who assumes a quite modernized view of being the other woman, but the entire entanglement will end up with some ludicrous witchcraft. Omar is ambitious and fast-learning, soon he gets the permission to run Nasser's dilapidated laundromat, and reunites with Johnny, who has been his best friend since childhood, together they embezzle the dough from Salim's underhand drug smuggling and refurbish the laundrette and make a successful business, their romance is also rekindled. But at the same time, Omar is obliged by Nasser to marry his disobedient daughter Tania (Wolf), and Johnny is reckoned as a betrayer by his ne'er-do-well gang members since he is working for Palestinians (also as an unscrewer for kick out Nasser's impecunious tenants), in addition to the conflict between Omar and Salim, there will be blood in the end. Violence is a requisite in depicting the gulf between well-off immigrants and poverty-stricken native malcontents, xenophobia, racial bias and chauvinism, all can be easily related and incited under the harsh environs, but Frears doesn't attempt to make a point by resorting too much to the excesses, whereas the tender, masculine attraction between two men is rendered with cozy panache and passion, truly, it is an in-the-closet relationship, but it is not about coming-out or AIDs, these routine trappings of the era, their future might be a moot point, however, the virtue of their love strikes as comfortingly authentic and endearing, thanks to the great pair Warnecke and Day-Lewis, one is resolutely sincere and the other is overwhelmingly charismatic, they do make a desirable couple together! Juxtaposed with its peers like MAURICE (1987, 7/10) and ANOTHER COUNTRY (1984, 8/10), MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE's grassroots ambiance and buoyant undertones applicably complement the missing piece of the UK queer cinema menagerie, not revolutionary, but a wonderful bliss indeed.