My Beautiful Laundrette Reviews

Quite possibly the most well-adjusted film about racism, homophobia, cultural identity, and conservative economic policies punching down ever made. My Beautiful Launderette is simultaneously about all these things and none of them as it doesn’t place any moral judgment or imperative upon any of them. It seems content to open-heartedly watch its various characters scheme, fall in love, and try to find their place within the macro and micro scales of the British communities they populate.

 

There’s the vaguest sense of a “coming of age” story structure here, but the stasis of the various communities doesn’t sea change like you’d find in normal American films. Think of how the plucky heroes of Risky Business grapple with capitalism in uneasy ways but learn valuable lessons along the journey. I’m sure the characters in Launderette learned lessons, but the film doesn’t stop with them or neatly wrap things up in a bow. Instead, we plow ahead as each character gets their say about why and how they’re acting in the various ways they’re acting. It’s refreshing, to be honest.

 

One character’s affair would lead to bigger fireworks in another film, as would the eventual showdown between mistress and wronged progeny, but we feel a conflicted sense that they’re both right. It is this elasticity of narrative that makes My Beautiful Launderette such a fascinating, sweet examination of Thatcherite England on a ground floor. These characters dream of looking up, of escaping their limited options, and several of them are severely limited, and finding something. What that something is is ephemeral and dependent upon any given moment in the narrative.  

 

Of course, everyone remembers Launderette primarily as a gay love story that doesn’t make a big point of this, and for proving Daniel Day-Lewis was a star in the making. These two points intersect as Day-Lewis plays street punk Johnny, the bruised, conflicted heart of the film and one of his sexiest characters to boot, who functions as both counterpoint and love interest to Omar (Gordon Warnecke, toothy and handsome while straddling cultures and dreaming of upward mobility). Omar may run the launderette and provide many of the inciting incidents of the plot, but it’s Johnny that gives them a deeper emotional resonance.

 

Stephen Frears work is a mixed bag, to be polite, but he was really firing when he made this. Its touching humanism exemplifies a story that finds the deepest connections in the toughest of environments. These characters scheme and cause damage, but we understand exactly where and why these decisions are enfolding. My Beautiful Launderette is a landmark piece of queer cinema, and one of the sweetest damn tales of the lower class scrambling to make it during repressive times you’ll ever see.  

By now, it is pretty obvious that Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the best actors ever. Indeed, he has recently won his 3rd Academy award for the Best actor for his awesome performance in ‘Lincoln’. However, I often wonder if the people raving about him have actually seen his older movies. Anyway, Day-Lewis basically gave here his breakthrough performance and even though this movie is nowadays pretty much forgotten, it is actually really good. The awesome thing, which was also pointed out by the great late Roger Ebert, is that the same year Daniel Day-Lewis also showed up in ‘A Room with a View’, another heralded movie released in 1985. The most striking thing is that those two roles were completely different (a street punk in 80’s UK and a repressed snobbish fellow in turn-of-the-twentieth-century England) and it was really something to see a complete unknown bursting into the scene with such a wide range, becoming right away a major player. Anyway, coming back to our main feature, it was actually supposed to be made for TV but was eventually released theatrically and became Stephen Frears’ first international success. Indeed, I thought it was a very interesting drama, dealing with various social issues but it was also an original and refreshing romance taking place in 80’s UK when Thatcher was Prime Minister, a rather grim and not really economic flourishing time. To conclude, I really liked this flick and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.