Thursday 13 March 2014

My Beautiful Laundrette
Dir: Stephen Frears
1985
*****
The perfect film has to have all the right ingredients and also a sprinkling of je ne sais quoi. My Beautiful Laundrette is unmistakably the work of genius writer Hanif Kureishi, the theatrical richness of the direction, not to mention his experimentation of technique at the time, is classic Stephen Frears and the performances speak for themselves, needless to say all the right new up and coming actors were hired and the likes of Saeed Jaffrey and Roshan Seth always deliver the goods, no less so than here. The added sprinkle of je ne sais quoi comes partly from the theatrics of the production but also because of the time it is set in. 1985 is the icing, punk, politics, poverty. Everyone, no matter what colour, creed, sexuality etc needed a Laundrette, why not have a beautiful one? A true original, groundbreaking and impossible to recreate or impersonate.

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