Daniel Day-Lewis earned his breakout performance as Johnny, a reformed skinhead in this tale of interracial gay romance in Thatcher’s Britain. Gordon Warnecke plays Johnny’s lover Omar, the aimless son of a Pakistani intellectual who is given a leg-up by a successful uncle when he’s put in charge of rescuing a failing laundrette in gritty South London. Remarkably, Omar and Johnny’s romance isn’t presented as all that transgressive; far more central are the experiences and attitudes towards “assimilation” of Omar’s British-Pakistani family, the elders of whom live double lives and indulge both their financial and sexual greed. My Beautiful Laundrette is transgressive in many ways, but mostly in the dizzying array of tensions it sets its sights on — racial, ideological, class, generational, and gender — an ambitious quality that can, admittedly, overwhelm at times. But ambition is an admirable flaw for a film to have, particularly one as sharp and groundbreaking as this.
"It’s an enormous pleasure to see a movie that’s really about something, and that doesn’t lay on any syrupy coating to make the subject go down easily."
— Pauline Kael
"Apart from the masterly Roshan Seth and Saeed Jaffrey, I particularly enjoyed Shirley Anne Field as Nasser's grateful mistress and also, as Johnny, Daniel Day Lewis."
— David Denby
A young Pakistani Briton manages a rundown laundrette with his lover while dealing with tension in his family, the local Pakistani community, and a persistent mob of skinheads.
A young British-Pakistani drifter finds new direction in life when he reconnects with an old school friend and is tasked with reviving a dying business for his uncle.
A film that combines My Beautiful Laundrette’s complex subject matter and tricky tone — at once humorous and cutting — is arguably still a rare sight today. Watching it smash taboos and break new ground in all the ways it does decades later, you can’t help but lament that movies this clever and complex and radical in their focuses aren't more commonplace now.
Way more interesting than its title — which sounds like a quirky Netflix reality show that’ll get canceled after a single season — suggests.
Oscars
1 nomination
BAFTA
2 nominations
Spirit Awards
1 nomination
Nat. Board of Review
1 win, 1 nomination
NYFCC
2 wins
LAFCA
1 nomination
