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lgbtq_recs
Movie: My Beautiful Laundrette
Directed by Stephen Frears; screenplay by Hanif Kureishi; starring Gordon Warnecke, Daniel Day-Lewis, Saeed Jaffrey, and Roshan Seth; 1985 (rated R).
When I first read westernredcedar's delightful rec for Prick Up Your Ears, I was worried that my own choice--the British film My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)--might be redundant. But instead, I am declaring this the First Annual 1980's Queer Film Awareness Day... watch both movies and celebrate!
I find it hard to categorize My Beautiful Laundrette--partly because I love the movie for so many different reasons, but also because the movie itself defies and mixes categories in marvelous ways. It's a "Romeo and Juliet" romance--between a Pakistani and a white ex-fascist punk--where both the lovers are men and no one dies tragically. It's a crime caper. It's a buddy comedy. It's a coming-of-age story with a lovable and yet disturbingly unscrupulous hero. It's a satire on racism, South Asian immigrant life, class conflict, and Thatcherite capitalism in 1980's London. It's a landmark of queer cinema and of British Asian cinema. It launched the careers of Daniel Day-Lewis (who plays the ex-fascist punk) and the British-Pakistani author Hanif Kureishi (who wrote the screenplay). It's dark, funny, sexy, and probably the only popular movie that has ever focused on the renovation of a laundrette. (That's a laundromat for us Yanks.)
The movie's main character is Omar (Gordon Warnecke), an ambitious young man caught between competing forces: the socialist politics of his alcoholic journalist father (Roshan Seth); the gleeful capitalist success of his uncle Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey); and his own loyalty to his working-class, non-Asian boyhood friend Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis). In the course of the movie, Omar and Johnny become lovers, take over one of Uncle Nasser's shady businesses (the laundrette of the title), and get into some less-than-legal adventures. No one is completely right or wrong in this story--even while we're rooting for Omar to overcome the forces of racism and homophobia, we have to confront his class snobbery and his desire to build a business "empire" at any cost. But, while the movie explores so many tough social issues, it's never didactic or heavy-handed.
If you want a teaser, this short clip from Youtube is exactly that. (Johnny is painting the laundrette, while his skinhead friends are watching suspiciously, and then there's a memorable moment of flirtation with Omar...) I also recommend this book of the movie's script, which includes Kureishi's autobiographical essay on British-Pakistani identity, "The Rainbow Sign."
Warnings: sex, violence, profanity, seriously low-budget film-making with poor sound quality.
In his introduction to the film script, Kureishi claims that he originally envisioned a long, multi-generational saga, beginning with the arrival of Omar's family in England and then following Omar and Johnny from childhood onwards. The actual movie is quite different--a short, sharp, low-budget glimpse of a few months in Omar's life--but this larger imaginary background lies behind it, helping all the characters and relationships to seem real and multi-dimensional. Although the film centers on Omar and Johnny, it also brings Omar's whole extended family to life, immersing us in the London Pakistani community--women and men, parents and children, immigrant "success stories" and embittered exiles. Because of this wider focus, the central gay relationship is never reduced to sexual identity alone; we see how Omar and Johnny are shaped by race, class, family, and urban life. And, for better or worse, the movie doesn't actually make a Big Deal out of being gay--it's just one part of Omar's life. Especially for a movie made in the 1980's, this is pretty amazing.
P.S. Like westernredcedar, I find that all roads (at least those involving British actors) lead back to Sirius Black. Sorry, Gary Oldman fans, but I have always been convinced that Daniel Day-Lewis should have gotten the part instead. Does anybody else think so after seeing Laundrette?
When I first read westernredcedar's delightful rec for Prick Up Your Ears, I was worried that my own choice--the British film My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)--might be redundant. But instead, I am declaring this the First Annual 1980's Queer Film Awareness Day... watch both movies and celebrate!
I find it hard to categorize My Beautiful Laundrette--partly because I love the movie for so many different reasons, but also because the movie itself defies and mixes categories in marvelous ways. It's a "Romeo and Juliet" romance--between a Pakistani and a white ex-fascist punk--where both the lovers are men and no one dies tragically. It's a crime caper. It's a buddy comedy. It's a coming-of-age story with a lovable and yet disturbingly unscrupulous hero. It's a satire on racism, South Asian immigrant life, class conflict, and Thatcherite capitalism in 1980's London. It's a landmark of queer cinema and of British Asian cinema. It launched the careers of Daniel Day-Lewis (who plays the ex-fascist punk) and the British-Pakistani author Hanif Kureishi (who wrote the screenplay). It's dark, funny, sexy, and probably the only popular movie that has ever focused on the renovation of a laundrette. (That's a laundromat for us Yanks.)
The movie's main character is Omar (Gordon Warnecke), an ambitious young man caught between competing forces: the socialist politics of his alcoholic journalist father (Roshan Seth); the gleeful capitalist success of his uncle Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey); and his own loyalty to his working-class, non-Asian boyhood friend Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis). In the course of the movie, Omar and Johnny become lovers, take over one of Uncle Nasser's shady businesses (the laundrette of the title), and get into some less-than-legal adventures. No one is completely right or wrong in this story--even while we're rooting for Omar to overcome the forces of racism and homophobia, we have to confront his class snobbery and his desire to build a business "empire" at any cost. But, while the movie explores so many tough social issues, it's never didactic or heavy-handed.
If you want a teaser, this short clip from Youtube is exactly that. (Johnny is painting the laundrette, while his skinhead friends are watching suspiciously, and then there's a memorable moment of flirtation with Omar...) I also recommend this book of the movie's script, which includes Kureishi's autobiographical essay on British-Pakistani identity, "The Rainbow Sign."
Warnings: sex, violence, profanity, seriously low-budget film-making with poor sound quality.
In his introduction to the film script, Kureishi claims that he originally envisioned a long, multi-generational saga, beginning with the arrival of Omar's family in England and then following Omar and Johnny from childhood onwards. The actual movie is quite different--a short, sharp, low-budget glimpse of a few months in Omar's life--but this larger imaginary background lies behind it, helping all the characters and relationships to seem real and multi-dimensional. Although the film centers on Omar and Johnny, it also brings Omar's whole extended family to life, immersing us in the London Pakistani community--women and men, parents and children, immigrant "success stories" and embittered exiles. Because of this wider focus, the central gay relationship is never reduced to sexual identity alone; we see how Omar and Johnny are shaped by race, class, family, and urban life. And, for better or worse, the movie doesn't actually make a Big Deal out of being gay--it's just one part of Omar's life. Especially for a movie made in the 1980's, this is pretty amazing.
P.S. Like westernredcedar, I find that all roads (at least those involving British actors) lead back to Sirius Black. Sorry, Gary Oldman fans, but I have always been convinced that Daniel Day-Lewis should have gotten the part instead. Does anybody else think so after seeing Laundrette?