This movie is so thoroughly worth it. It would be worth it if it were just an hour and a half about a sprawling British-Pakistani family’s business and personal ventures in 1985 London. It would be worth it if it were just for young Daniel Day Lewis as a South London punk with his sleeves pushed up five inches past his elbows. It would be worth it for anything anyone in this movie says about politics or the immigrant experience or economics or education or, incidentally, worth. It would be worth it just for how well it serves its female characters. It would be worth it just for Tania, honestly.
But My Beautiful Laundrette is worth it for all these things, and more. Let’s say: the moment when suddenly, softly, Johnny takes Omar’s face in his hands and kisses him deeply in the shadows of an alley, and even though you know this is coming, all the pieces in your heart fall into place at the sight.
When I picked this up at a flea market circa 1995 I could only guess it was coming by reading the semiotics of the VHS cover!
I’d also recommend the miniseries the BBC did of (screenwriter) Hanif Kureishi’s first novel The Buddha of Suburbia in 1993. It covers a lot of the same themes plus the death of glam/birth of punk, being in an avant-garde theatre troupe in the seventies, and even more bisexuals. And it stars a young Naveen Andrews, whom you may recognize from Lost, or failing that The English Patient.
Oh holy moly I will take that rec, thank you!!! And it looks like Roshan Seth is in this too to which I say: wooooo! Me in every one of his scenes in My Beautiful Laundrette: “who is this man with the most beautiful eyes”