Mark Kremode

My Beautiful Laudrette

My Beautiful Laundrette is set within the Asian community in London, during the Thatcher years, and displays those values, of money but 'anybody can make it.' Omar gains the running of his Uncle Nasser's laundrette. He is helped by his friend Johnny who is an outsider, white but not entirely accepted by either the white or Asian Londoners. There are many memorable characters: Tania, Omar's cousin whom he might marry. Salim the manager of Nasser's garage and sometime drug importer. Rachel, Nasser's white mistress, who like Johnny seems to be another outsider


Directed by
Stephen Frears
Produced by
Tim Bevan
Sarah Radclyffe
Written by
Hanif Kureishi
Starring
Gordon Warnecke
Daniel Day-Lewis
Saeed Jaffrey
Roshan Seth
Music by
Ludus Tonalis
Classification
15
Distributor
Cinema Club
Studio
Working Title Films
Distributed by
Mainline Pictures
Release date(s)
November 16, 1985 (1985-11-16)
Genre
Drama
Setting
South London, early 1980s
Main characters
Omar, Johnny, Papa

Omar dreams of success so works to achieve it. Along the way he meets up with old school-friend Johnny, who has betrayed him by falling in with a group of neo-nazis. Omar soon has Johnny working for him and his uncle. Turning the tables on him as he is made to rely on the very people he has been taught to hate. Johnny is almost continually followed and observed by his old gang of friends who are like a strange sort of Greek Chorus passively hanging around taunting Johnny for associating with Omar and his family whilst making almost no effort to better themselves; something which ambitious Omar strives to do.