Good Clean Fun

My Beautiful Laundrette

Directed by Stephen Frears

At the Nickelodeon Theater

"Take my advice: there's money in muck." Omar (Gordon Warnecke), a young Pakistani on the dole in London, takes these words to heart as he aspires to the comfortable status of his assimilated (and sleazy) uncle and pursues his own commercial dream of "a laundrette the size of the Ritz." With the assistance of his gay lover, Johnny (Daniel Day Lewis), an ersatz National Front hoodlum, Omar dreams up "Powders," a designer cleaning service replete with neon signs and high-style furnishings--even a fish tank.

This enterprise is more troublesome than it might seem, however, because the setting is Maggie Thatcher's Britain. The plot moves along as Omar encounters the racist tensions and youthful frustrations of the fair Queen's city, which threaten to rise above the surface and destroy the young Pakistani's sweet dreams.

For My Beautiful Laundrette, his film debut, playwright Hanif Kureishi uses a sharp ironic scalpel to cut through the bleakness of the nasty South London setting. He gives us humour and a solid plot along with a sturdy and valuable lesson. A quick and scantily budgeted effort, Laudrette grapples with several major conflicts: between immigrants and natives, different generations and sexes, and even pairs of brothers.

Despite its moralizing, the film moves along quite well with the pace of a thriller and occasional elements of a gangster flick. Except for a few moments of sentimentality when Johnny tries to resist a regression to his former "bad boy" ways, Laundrette sports all the signs of a low-budget masterpiece.

At the beginning of the film, the characters' prospects are less than rosy: Omar, having failed two sets of exams, does household chores all day for his widowed father, and Johnny, living in an abandoned building, has to keep one step ahead of some burly evictors. But Omar's Uncle Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey) comes to the rescue and agrees to employ his nephew, eventually allowing him to manage the eponymous laundrette, at that point nothing more than an unprofitable hangout for skinheads and other local riffraff.

KUREISHI AND DIRECTOR Frears cleverly handle the ensuing development both of the cleaning service and the gay love affair, often adding sweet and ridiculous touches. On opening day, Johnny and Omar make love in the plush back room while customers form a comically eager queue for the bannered and streamered laundrette.

On a larger scale, this film follows and explores the web of loyalties, disloyalties and other connections in which Johnny and Omar are involved. As Johnny tries to take a stance opposing his tough excomrades, Omar begins to ease into his uncle's social circle. For the varying social groups of Laundrette, Kureishi has created full and spirited characters, and Frears has cast very fine actors to inhabit those personages.

Both affection and sympathy shine through Kureishi's ironic treatment of Omar and Johnny. His portrait of the assimilated "Pakis," however, is another matter: priceless if only for its scathing directness, Nasser's house is divided between traditionally attired and silent females and the Westernized (read: loud) and self-satisfied males. Nasser himself remains an important hair's breadth away from merely detestable because he retains a sense of brotherly loyalty and an affectionate nature--although he does deal in very detestable and profitable muck. The real villain is Nasser's right-hand man, the fully macho Salim, who smuggles drugs and handles the rough stuff of the business.

In complete contrast is Omar's father, sunk very low in his adopted nation, who is presented in the film's opening moments lying on his bed and drinking vodka. As Laundrette unfolds, however, his esteemed past, dignity and ideals come forward; he urges his son to "go to university, become a politician." He also retains a good deal of self-mockery and dry wit. On meeting Johnny at the laundrette's opening, he gently asks "Do you do a pink rinse or are you still a fascist?"

Within his social commentary, Kureishi leaves room for a bit of the fanciful. One very satisfying moment occurs when Nasser's wife, sick of his philandering, takes action and cooks up a strange potion against his mistress, charmingly played by Shirley Anne Field. This dreadful concoction makes the mistress' furniture move around and causes a rash to break out on her stomach.

My Beautiful Laundrette may be packed with charming irony but it never disguises the fact that the violence and frustration of this small section of the world is mounting. Throughout the film, the unlucky players seem to be heading ever more quickly toward disaster. Kureishi's lively, compassionate script and Frears' steady direction provide some comic relief and, just as important, wise and unblearyeyed condemnations.