My Beautiful Laundrette

After the death of his wife and his subsequent descent into alcoholic near-agoraphobia, a crotchety Pakistani intellectual convinces his shady entrepreneur brother to provide work for his son in this multi-layered portrait of the immigrant experience in Great Britain. Young Londoner Omar (Gordon ...more

This terse, elliptical, complicated film reveals new layers with each viewing despite the somewhat simplistic hopefulness of its message that love and loyalty can conquer differences in class, politics, and ethnic background. Writer Hanif Kureishi and director Stephen Frears pack My Beautiful Laundrette with so many characters, ideas, and well-observed moments that stars Gordon Warnecke and Daniel Day-Lewis barely get the chance to demonstrate their characters' dance of desire and economic ...more