767 My Beautiful Laundrette

[swo17]

My Beautiful Laundrette



Stephen Frears was at the forefront of the British cinematic revival of the mid-1980s, and the delightfully transgressive My Beautiful Laundrette is his greatest triumph of the period. Working from a richly layered script by writer Hanif Kureishi, soon to be internationally renowned, Frears tells an uncommon love story that takes place between a young South London Pakistani man (Gordon Warnecke), who decides to open an upscale laundromat to make his family proud, and his childhood friend, a skinhead (Daniel Day-Lewis, in a breakthrough role), who volunteers to help make his dream a reality. This culture-clash comedy is also a subversive work of social realism, which dares to address racism, homophobia, and sociopolitical marginalization in Margaret Thatcher's England.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New, restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Oliver Stapleton, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New conversation between director Stephen Frears and producer Colin MacCabe
• New interviews with writer Hanif Kureishi, producers Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe, and Stapleton
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by journalist Sarfraz Manzoor

[sir_luke]

Beaver

[Minkin]

Blu-ray.com

Don't you love topics that don't get any posts until the reviews start coming in? Nobody was excited for this film?

I've never seen it, but between the interviews and the film, I'm most interested in hearing how Thatcher killed everything that was good.

[cdnchris]

Yes, the features aren't short of Thatcher bashing. Except Frears (i think, don't have my notes on me) praises her for starting Channel 4.

[Jonathan S]

Britain was a very homophobic country under her tenure, in some ways comparable to Russia today. The notorious Section 28 was introduced in 1988. As someone who was a politically active young gay man at the time (and personally threatened with physical violence due to my sexuality in a national newspaper), I can vividly recall how much hatred a huge section of the population felt for Thatcher, her values and ministers.

She was incredibly divisive - although some groups, who might otherwise have felt nothing in common, were united by their contempt for her. I worked in a college A/V unit and on the morning following the 1984 Brighton bomb (about a year before MBL was released) the unit was packed with staff, including tutors, who were cheering at the reports and images of the dead and injured, while expressing regret that Thatcher herself had not been killed or mutilated.

I'm not condoning the planting of bombs (frankly anyone in Britain then was terrified of being caught up in an IRA explosion), but it's a measure of the hatred for her - which I still feel, deep in my gut, every time I read her name, see her picture or above all hear her voice. It was clear from some of the reactions to her death that many in Britain still feel the same.

I think there's still a great film to be made (unless it's already been done?) about how the Pink Pound - perhaps more than any other factor - has made LGBT people acceptable to wider society, in much the same way that MBL wittily charts the rise of the Thatcherite Asian businessman. Capitalism needs you, whether you're queer or black.

[colinr0380]

Capitalism needs you, whether you're queer or black.

Or Polish (and Skolimowski's Moonlighting would make for a good double bill with My Beautiful Landrette). Or an international investor in the London property market. All those divisions strangely fade away when the only colour that matters is green.

Except Frears (i think, don't have my notes on me) praises her for starting Channel 4.

One of the interesting, seemingly paradoxical things about the creation of Channel 4 is that the Conservatives were seemingly all in favour for another independent broadcaster because it would help to undermine, if not break up, the in-house production processes of the BBC by providing an avenue for smaller independent production companies to make programmes on commission for Channel 4 instead, which was something that fell completely within the Thatcherite ethos of championing small businesses rather than large state monopolies. And it seemed to work as these days even most BBC programmes are produced by indepdendent production companies rather than entirely within the BBC itself.

There's a great, possibly apocryphal, story about the setting up of Channel 4 as an 'alternative, minority' channel apparently suggesting to the Conservative government at the time that this presumably meant more sedate limited audience programming such as pottery shows, wine tasting debates or leisurely canal boat rides, when instead Channel 4 produced works like Stephen Frears's film Walter, starring Ian McKellen as a mentally disabled man suffering abuse and neglect (which was screened on Channel 4's first night of broadcasting back in 1982), long debates on controversial and sensitive topics, rowdy youth oriented music shows, the 'red triangle' series of controversial films, all the way up to 1995s double whammy seasons of the Red Light Zone on sex and prostitution documentaries, and the lesbian oriented film and documentary series Dyke TV! (which I remember gave me the chance to see the great Desert Hearts)

Since 1998 or so Channel 4 has had to entirely fund itself through advertising revenue, so the amount of daring and boundary pushing television has declined somewhat (and Channel 4 films morphed into Film on 4, and then into the Film4 production company and digital TV channel. Its ambitions have grown larger and more focused on international acclaim, perhaps down to the turning point success of Four Weddings and the early Danny Boyle films, though smaller films occasionally come through, albeit far less confrontational, individual and unique ones), and the decade of Big Brother taking over vast hours of the channel's airtime throughout the 2000s didn't really help either. But it is still around, even if its schedule is more likely to be about home renovation and emotive shock docs than anything more intellectually rigorous these days.

[Jonathan S]

I find the Channel 4 of today completely unrecognisable compared to that of 30+ years ago. At the time, it mainly interested me for its revival of many silent, 1930s & '40s films neglected by the BBC (also American black & white TV shows) - but there were plenty slots for say feminist, trades union and - even before Out on Tuesday - lesbian and gay programming. A midnight discussion (in a strand like The Eleventh Hour) on Freud's castration complex theory was quite typical - and of course the channel received many satirical jibes.

I became particularly familiar with its schedule as at the time I was regularly reviewing TV for Gay Times and every week C4 (uniquely) sent me a press pack, the size of a modest telephone book, with very detailed information and photos. They were extremely cooperative generally (often inviting me to previews at their theatre or sending out tapes) where as the BBC usually greeted requests for a gay publication with enormous suspicion and recalcitrance. ("Why do you want to review this play? There's hardly any gay element in it!")

Not surprisingly, C4 was desperately short of advertisers in the early days and I still have VHS recordings of their movie broadcasts with no ad break at all or (more commonly) a static screen during the adless break reassuring viewers that the next part would follow soon!

[GaryC]

The original aspect ratio for this film is 1.37:1, not 1.66:1. It was made for TV in 16mm and given a cinema release and both times I saw it in a cinema it was shown in 4:3. But the DP has supervised the transfer, so...

Ditto what others have said about Channel 4 in the 1980s. In 1983 it ran a short Jon Jost season: a profile plus the features Last Chants for a Slow Dance (now included in the book 1001 Films to See Before You Die), Angel City and Speaking Directly. Those are according to Jost the only TV showings of those films in the world, ever. (Unfortunately C4 had to cut two of them. After complaints following a warning in TV Times, Last Chants lost the killing and dismemberment of a rabbit. In Speaking Directly, Jost utters a speech about his penis and begins to masturbate on camera. In C4's broadcast this was covered by a black bar that grew larger as the scene progressed.)

[Jonathan S]

There's a great, possibly apocryphal, story about the setting up of Channel 4 as an 'alternative, minority' channel apparently suggesting to the Conservative government at the time that this presumably meant more sedate limited audience programming such as pottery shows, wine tasting debates or leisurely canal boat rides,

Sounds more like BBC Four... though not according to The Daily Mash!

[feihong]

Wow, yes. Nobody talks about that movie anymore. I'd very much like to see it again.

It seems like the kind of thing Olive might release, but I wonder who owns it? IMDB lists Channel Four and Working Title as the production companies.

[GaryC]

Gary it certainly played first release in Oz in some form of widescreen (probably 1.78 or 1.75) I am assuming (can't verify) the distribution prints were 35mm blowups.

Fascinating to read the comments from locals about the Thatcher era. I certainly witnessed firsts hand the public "authorized" homophobia described by Jonathan more than once during a stay in London mid 1982. Not once but twice leaving the Colherne pub in Earls Court at closing time (then 11 pm), uniformed police would stand outside the doors of the pub, less than artlessly blocking easy passage, and would harass and then arrest random patrons who were simply trying to move on for things like resisting arrest and disturbing the peace. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was like a return to the fifties and the years of cottage raids and persecutions of public figures like Gielgud and others.

As for Thatcher she was the spawn of Satan, and her poisonous legacy of neo liberalism is still fucking over the planet. She forfeited any right to be called human and the day she died I cracked a bottle of Dom to celebrate (as we did when Franco died the previous decade.)

Speaking of which where the fuck is Sammy and Rosie get Laid these days?

I'm sure most UK cinemas would have shown My Beautiful Laundrette in 1.75:1. I happened to see it in a pair of cinemas which could still show 1.37:1 then (NFT1 and the cinema at Southampton Uni Film Society).

I saw Sammy and Rosie Get Laid in the cinema on release and not since. I remember not liking it much.

Incidentally Hanif Kureishi deliberately misspelled the final word in the title (as laundrette, not launderette) as a comment on the English education system but it says something that no one noticed. And now "laundrette" is listed as an alternative spelling in the OED - a contribution by Kureishi to the English language.

By the way, David, I used to know someone who was a regular at the Coleherne and would be around the same age as you. I wonder if you and he ever met? (Another David - Critchard.)

[feihong]

I also remember not liking Sammy & Rosie, but in spite of that many moments and scenes from the film have stayed with me for years and years; the slums being bulldozed, Sammy's father being haunted by his victim, and quite a few others. I saw it on VHS as a teenager, and I'd like to see it again with a better appreciation of its context. Time might have been very good to the film, is my guess. Anyways, the release of My Beautiful Laundrette and David Hare's mention of the follow-up movie has me thinking about that film as well.

[Dr Amicus]

This is one of my favourite British films from the 80s, as a bisexual teen I found it personal in a way I never did with John Hughes's films. Indeed, I've always thought of it as a Gay Film - when I was at Kent University in the late 80s, the Gay & Lesbian Society put on a few film screenings as part of a Positive Images week (how dated in many respects - but see previous comments about the blessed St Margaret...) and this was one of the films chosen, indeed the only one I can remember the title of. A few years later, at Sussex Uni doing my Doctorate, Christine Geraghty visited to give a talk on the film as she was preparing her book on it - which is worth reading although she sees the film primarily as a British-Asian film and discusses it mainly in those terms. Indeed she seemed somewhat surprised when I said that I saw it primarily as a Gay film.

As for Sammy & Rosie, I saw this a couple of times just after it came out. Indeed, I overheard my campus neighbours afterwards discussing me and deciding that I couldn't be gay as I went to films like that! Anyway, as for the film itself I remember liking it - although the second time it did seem a little overschematic. Just don't bother with London Kills Me, notoriously one of the worst films to ever get a cover on Sight & Sound.

[colinr0380]

I think I have London Kills Me knocking around on an old VHS from its one and only television screening. I still haven't worked up the courage to see it yet!

Though I am curious about whether the BBC's miniseries of The Buddha of Suburbia holds up after all these years. That could similarly also start a tug-of-war between groups wanting to champion it, and it is also a good example of those days when Channel 4's boundary pushing could also end up dragging the otherwise staid BBC into producing similar material in an attempt to compete, or capitalise on a known quality.

[cdnchris]

Incidentally Hanif Kureishi deliberately misspelled the final word in the title (as laundrette, not launderette) as a comment on the English education system but it says something that no one noticed. And now "laundrette" is listed as an alternative spelling in the OED - a contribution by Kureishi to the English language.

Ah ha! That was driving me nuts and it never occurred to me that the misspelling may have been intentional. I thought it was one of those odd differences in spelling between North America and the UK (Canada shares some of the same spellings, though oddly not all). I don't even recall anyone mentioning this in the supplements, which would seem like an interesting point.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Hanif Kureishi must have caught some zeitgeist with the word Laundrette. When I was using them during the 70s in Sydney the were always spelt a la Hanif without the "er". So the misspelling was provincial as well as parochial. The first time I saw one that opened here spelt "correctly" I thought they were wrong.

Apparently there was an Australian writer named Maureen Stewart who specialized in school readers and published a play called At the Laundrette in 1979. (I suspect this is the only overlap between her work and Kureishi's.) Here in the U.S. we had a "laundrette" all the way back in 1946, which to judge from this article was the most exciting thing going in St. Louis. I think for most Americans the word (in either spelling) was almost completely replaced by "laundromat"—when I first heard the title of Frears' film, I thought it referred to a woman...

[zedz]

As for Sammy & Rosie, I saw this a couple of times just after it came out. Indeed, I overheard my campus neighbours afterwards discussing me and deciding that I couldn't be gay as I went to films like that! Anyway, as for the film itself I remember liking it - although the second time it did seem a little overschematic.

That's my issue with the film as well, though Stephen Frears does his level best to combat this issue with Kureishi's script.

[GaryC]

By the way, David, I used to know someone who was a regular at the Coleherne and would be around the same age as you. I wonder if you and he ever met? (Another David - Critchard.)

Gary maybe put us in touch with each other? I don't recognize the name but those days were spent in seas of alcohol and coke, with some periods of sleep and sobriety every so often. I remember innumerable faces (and other body parts) but very few names. The close chums I had then (we all lived in Fulham) are all dead. Most departed the planet before 1990. The Cole was part of an old London that no longer exists, to say nothing of its Stately Homo provenance as the original UK Leather bar (even if most of the clientele arrived by cab or tube rather than Harley) but I suppose everything else in London is in the process of vanishing.

I'm no longer in touch with him. I knew him in the 1990s when he lived locally to me (just across the road for one year) and was a member of the local writers' group I still belong to. (He was a poet.) He was on benefits on medical grounds (rheumatoid arthritis) and at the end of the decade had to sell his house and move in with his parents (then elderly, now I understand dead) in Exeter when his benefits were cut, which was when I lost touch.

I'm not qualified to comment on accuracy but you may well know that the Coleherne features in one of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City novels, so one wonders if Maupin ever visited?

[beamish14]

Hanif Kureishi incurred a devastating spinal injury on Boxing Day 2022 and may have severe mobility impairments for the rest of his life