1985
Directed by Stephen Frears - his breakthrough film
Screenplay by Hanif Kureishi
Starring Saeed Jaffrey, Roshan Seth and Daniel Day-Lewis
Budget:£650,000
Gross:$2,451,545
Awards
Nominated for Oscar
Academy Awards, USA
Year Result Award Category/Recipient(s)
1987 Nominated Oscar Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen Hanif Kureishi
BAFTA Awards
Year Result Award Category/Recipient(s)
1986 Nominated BAFTA Film Award Best Actor in a Supporting Role Saeed Jaffrey
Best Screenplay - Original Hanif Kureishi
It was originally shot for TV (Channel 4), on a very low budget and on 16mm. However, due to its good reception by critics at the Edinburgh Film Festival, it was then promoted to the big screen and distributed on 32mm, leading it to sunbstaintial international success.
It has been described as 'ground breaking' in its exploration of somewhat taboo subjects of the time, class, sexuality, race and the difference between generations. As a result, it also sparked much controversy, particularly from the Asian community, many of whom claimed it to be a degrading image of Pakistanis.
Plot Summary
Much of the Pakistani Hussein family has settled in London, striving for the riches promised by Thatcherism. Nasser and his right hand man, Salim, have a number of small businesses and they do whatever they need to make money, even if the activities are illegal. As such, Nasser and his immediate family live more than a comfortable lifestyle, and he flaunts his riches whenever he can. Meanwhile, his brother, alcoholic Ali, once a famous journalist in Pakistan, lives in a seedy flat with his son, Omar. Ali's life in London is not as lucrative in part because of his left leaning politics, which does not mesh with the ideals of Thatcherism. To help his brother, Nasser gives Omar a job doing menial labor. But Omar, with bigger plans, talks Nasser into letting him manage Nasser's run down laundrette. Omar seizes what he sees as an opportunity to make the laundrette a success, and employs an old friend, Johnny - who has been most recently running around with a gang of white punks - to help him. Johnny and Omar have a special relationship, but one that has gone through its ups and downs, the downs fostered by anti-immigration sentiments of white England. Omar and Johnny each have to evaluate if their ideals of success are worth it at all cost.
Context
The reality of Britain in the 1980s, during the period of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, was not reflected in the films of the heritage cinema; a cinema engaged with historical context and an England of middle class individuals. The articulation of the gap between the middle class and the underclass, and the presentation of gender and sexuality in contemporary 1980s Britain was left to films such as My Beautiful Laundrette.
My Beautiful Laundrette began to reflect the multiculturalism of Britain in the 1980s, redefining national identity at a time when more traditional, jingoistic concepts of nationalism were being resurrected by the Conservative government. Susan Barber states that the film offered ‘an ironic salutation to the entrepreneurial spirit in the 1980s that Margaret Thatcher championed’ (Barber, 1993: 221). This irony is derived from the fact that the entrepreneurs are an extended Pakistani family who have taken the Thatcherite ideology to heart and turned the tables on the former colonial power
The laundrette functions as a third space within the film, a space which transcends race, class and sexuality, allowing a plurality of identities. It functions as a hybrid space where the Asian presence and the English presence are combined and accepted. It is a space where there is the possibility of an enriching life in a tolerant host country.
Context - Set in the 1980's, during the Thatcher years. in London
