Login
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.
