My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) - film review

London in the mid-1980s.  Omar is a young British Pakistani, the son of disillusioned journalist Hussein who has become a bedridden alcoholic after his wife’s suicide.  Against the wishes of his father, who wants him to go to university, Omar persuades his entrepreneurial uncle Nasser to let him take over the management of a rundown laundrette.  With money acquired by somewhat dubious means and the help of his old school friend Johnny, Omar totally transforms the graffiti-covered South London hellhole into a laundrette fit for a prince.  In no time at all, Omar has a thriving business and makes plans to expand his washing empire across the capital.  But then his world starts to fall apart.  Not only does he come under pressure from his own family, who are keen to marry him off (not having yet twigged that he is gay), he also has Johnny’s former neo-Nazi friends to deal with.  Omar’s entrepreneurial dream is about to become a hideous nightmare...

The landmark British film which established director Stephen Frears’ international reputation and gave Daniel Day-Lewis his first major screen role is one that paints a depressing picture of social decay and racial conflict in the 1980s.  My Beautiful Laundrette succinctly and eloquently encapsulates everything that was wrong in Thatcher’s Britain and vividly evokes the disenfranchisement and damaging social tensions that stemmed from the Conservative government’s myopic preoccupation with the enterprise culture.  Hanif Kureishi’s insightful screenplay is witty and engaging, but it is also devastatingly astute and offers what is arguably the most powerful indictment of government policies which were not only morally indefensible and ruinous to British industry (both in the short and long term) but left bitter social wounds that would take decades to heal.  Whilst it deals with some serious social issues, My Beautiful Laundrette is not a ranting polemic of the Ken Loach variety but a sensitive, delicately composed drama which exposes the failings of the Thatcher administration far more subtly, through the adverse impact these had on communities and individuals.

My Beautiful Laundrette was originally made for television (to be screened on the recently created Channel 4) and was shot in just six weeks on a very modest budget.  The film’s limited resources give it a gritty, washed-out feel that is redolent of its era, and whilst a few of the performances are a little on the wooden side, most are outstanding.  Saeed Jaffrey was the only big name actor in the cast when the film was made and turns in a performance that is both hilarious and poignant as the Asian community’s answer to Alan Sugar.  Daniel Day-Lewis was a virtual unknown as the time but is clearly destined for better things - his sympathetic portrayal of the peroxide-quiffed gay ex-Fascist Johnny remains one of the highpoints of his illustrious career.  Gordon Warnecke makes an impressive screen debut as the gay proto-yuppy Omar, a complex character which visibly stretches the actor’s talents to the limit; having appeared in several British TV shows of the 80s and 90s (Doctor Who, Birds of a Feather, The Bill, Brookside, etc.), Warnecke went on to pursue a distinguished stage career.  My Beautiful Laundrette proved to be such a hit when it was screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival that it was subsequently given a national, and then international, cinema release.  It was not only a major commercial success but proved to be one of the most critically acclaimed British films of the decade, as well as a classic of gay cinema.

My Beautiful Laundrette was an incredibly challenging film for its era, pushing the envelope in its depiction of race relations and homosexuality at a time when both of these issues were highly contentious.  Most of the negative criticism it received was from the Asian community, which condemned the film for its seemingly negative portrayal of British Pakistanis.  Certainly, the film pulls few punches and is just as critical of Asian immigrants who make no attempt to integrate themselves into British society as it is of the neo-Nazi thugs who seem hell-bent on fuelling an outright race war.   But the real enemy the film has in its sights is a government that has given up on its social obligations and instead pursued policies that were guaranteed to drive communities apart and create lasting damage to the fabric of British society.  My Beautiful Laundrette is a perceptive commentary on what can go wrong when a government gets its socio-economic bearings completely wrong and accepts that social meltdown is a price worth paying for short term economic advantage.

© Alex Sullivan 2011

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