My Beautiful Laundrette
My Beautiful Laundrette
An ambitious Pakistani Briton and his white boyfriend strive for success and hope when they open a glamorous laundromat.
Charles London reviewedMarch 24, 2025
This early Stephen Frears film from 1985 doesn't present a single theme but rather "washes" many together in an engaging hour and a half. The story revolves around an ambitious young English-born Pakistani man in London during a period of historical unemployment.
In small to moderate doses, the movie touches on racism, neo-fascism, immigration, cultural pressures and barriers, sexual orientation, marital infidelity, alcholism, blue-collar crime, white-collar crime, illicit-drug smuggling, and well, you get the picture. I won't go into how some of these topics may or may not relate to 2020's America, but rather let you draw your own parallels.
The movie is a little bit rough on the edges. It was shot with a small budget on 16mm film, and it employs a mixture of experienced and inexperienced actors. However, despite it's technical and budgetary shortcomings, it manages to gently, and humorously, launder a basket-full of topics.
Side note: good chance to see a young Daniel Day-Lewis before he was famous.