My Beautiful Laundrette

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

After the death of his wife and his subsequent descent into alcoholic near-agoraphobia, a crotchety Pakistani intellectual convinces his shady entrepreneur brother to provide work for his son in this multi-layered portrait of the immigrant experience in Great Britain. Young Londoner Omar (Gordon Warnecke) isn't sure what he wants out of life, but his uncle Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey) provides a corrupt, capitalist role model as Omar graduates from washing cars for the old crook to running his run-down laundromat. After a chance meeting with Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis), an old school chum whose flirtation with fascism deeply wounded Omar's principled Papa (Roshan Seth), Omar hires the young thug to work for him. Soon, the pair begin a romantic relationship that remains as under wraps as the illicit drug-running and enforcement work they perform for Nasser's associate, Salim (Derrick Branche). On the domestic front, Omar must balance his knowledge of Nasser's long-running affair with posh Brit Rachel (Shirley Ann Field) with his own loyalty and attraction to Nasser's westernized daughter, Tania (Rita Wolf). After successfully transforming his laundrette into a vision of resplendent pastel suds and providing a bright spot in his otherwise squalid London neighborhood, Omar seems to have a bright future in Nasser's organization. The spectre of Johnny's past, however, combines with Omar's conflicted immigrant loyalties to threaten the sense of identity the young man has managed to stake out for himself. British-born, half-Pakistani playwright and novelist Hanif Kureishi won an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette, which was originally filmed for BBC television. Kureishi collaborated again with director Stephen Frears on Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Subtitle: Mult
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 (Alternate Wide Screen)
• Features:
  • cc
  • Original theatrical trailer

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Nominated Best Original Screenplay - 1986 (Hanif Kureishi)

• Independent Spirit Awards

•     Nominated Best Foreign Film - 1986 (Stephen Frears)

• National Board of Review

•     Won Best Supporting Actor - 1986 (Daniel Day-Lewis)
•     Nominated Best Picture - 1986

• New York Film Critics Circle

•     Won Best Screenplay - 1986 (Hanif Kureishi)
•     Won Best Supporting Actor - 1986 (Daniel Day-Lewis)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Daniel Day - Lewis - Johnny
       Gordon Warnecke - Omar
       Saeed Jaffrey - Nasser
       Roshan Seth - Papa
       Shirley Ann Field - Rachel
       Derrick Branche - Salim
       Ayub Khan Din - Student

• Director:

  Stephen Frears

• Producer:

  Tim Bevan, Sarah Radclyffe

• Screenwriter:

  Hanif Kureishi

• Cinematographer:

  Oliver Stapleton

• Composer (Music Score):

  Stanley Myers, Ludus Tonalis, Hans Zimmer

• Editor:

  Mick Audsley

• Production Designer:

  Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski

• Costume Designer:

  Lindy Hemming

• Makeup:

  Elaine Carew

• Stunts:

  Rocky Taylor, Jim Dowdall, Nosher Powell, Tip Tipping, Bill Weston

REVIEW:

• This terse, elliptical, complicated film reveals new layers with each viewing despite the somewhat simplistic hopefulness of its message that love and loyalty can conquer differences in class, politics, and ethnic background. Writer Hanif Kureishi and director Stephen Frears pack My Beautiful Laundrette with so many characters, ideas, and well-observed moments that stars Gordon Warnecke and Daniel Day-Lewis barely get the chance to demonstrate their characters' dance of desire and economic power. It's a toss-up whether the compression of Johnny and Omar's romance and struggle with the past into a few key scenes is the mark of brilliantly cinematic storytelling or simply of Kureishi's inexperience; either way, My Beautiful Laundrette is hardly a romantic comedy despite the sweetness of its love story and the wry humor of its tangled social and economic circles. Day-Lewis and Warnecke are appealing in their fresh-faced naivete and bravado, but it's Saeed Jaffrey, Roshan Seth, and the tart, smart Rita Wolf whose perceptive, pitch-perfect characters provide the theories and examples by which Omar can gauge his integration into Anglo-Pakistani society. All this talk of identity politics makes My Beautiful Laundrette sound strident and stuffy, but it isn't. Full of indelible characters and well-defined conflicts, Frears and Kureishi's film works on the most basic level as a coming-of-age story -- one whose rich details provide astute audiences with plenty to ponder. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi