My Beautiful LaundretteThis film is about clashes: racial, socioeconomic, social and subculture confrontations. The action revolves around a Pakistani family living in 1985 Thatcher England. The film is advertised as the story of two gay young men who operate a Laundromat. But in my opinion this is a lesser part of the plot. The gay relationship is treated rather normally as a difficult choice outside the mainstream of society.The Pakistani family is portrayed with its traditions and different familial relationships struggling to survive and at the same time take advantage of the better business environment in England. The relationship between the two young men becomes a metaphor for this conflict, Omar representing the Pakis and Johnny representing the English. The problems they confront are racial - Johnnys fascist friends, socioeconomic - drugs vs. legitimate business, social Pakistani family traditions and in a small part subculture gay vs. straight.

Stephen Frears, who directed the film, went on to direct Dangerous Liaisons (1988), The Grifters (1990) and High Fidelity (2000) as well as others. It was the first screenplay by writer Hanif Kureishi and the first film role for Gordon Warnecke who played the young Paki protagonist. His partner, the young English protagonist Johnny was played by Daniel Day Lewis who earlier appeared in Ghandi (1982), The Bounty (1984) and later in A Room with a View (1986) and My Left Foot (1989) and you will see him in a starring role as Bill The Butcher in Gangs of New York (2002).

I figured out from the context that unscrew means evict and unblock probably means to evict everyone in the building, but these were guesses. The term wog is in the dictionary as a disparaging name for dark skinned Middle Eastern nationalities. I got a kick out of the name Powders for their Laundromat a double entendre for soap powder and the drug money they used for funding. I also liked the irony of playing Fanfare for the Common Man at their Laundromat opening ceremony.This was a well-done story and I can recommend it. The film is almost 20 years old and our copy downloaded from satellite was grainy and poor quality. A rental might look better.Reviewed March 17, 2003