My Beautiful Laundrette
| My Beautiful Laundrette | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Stephen Frears |
| Produced by | Sarah Radclyffe |
| Written by | Hanif Kureishi |
| Starring |
Gordon Warnecke Daniel Day-Lewis Saeed Jaffrey Roshan Seth |
| Music by | "Ludus Tonalis"; produced Stanley Myers and Hans Zimmer |
| Cinematography | Oliver Stapleton |
| Edited by | Mick Audsley |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Orion Classics |
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Release date
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Running time
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97 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English Urdu |
| Budget | £650,000 (estimated) |
| Box office | $2,451,545 |
My Beautiful Laundrette is a 1985 British comedy-drama film directed by Stephen Frears from a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi. The film was also one of the first films released by Working Title Films.
The story is set in London during the contemporary Thatcher era, as reflected in the complex—and often comical—relationships between members of the Pakistani and English communities. The story focuses on Omar, a young Pakistani man living in London, and his reunion and eventual romance with his old friend, a street punk named Johnny. The two become the caretakers and business managers of a launderette originally owned by Omar's uncle Nasser. The plot addresses several polemical issues of the time, including homosexuality and racism, depicted within the social and economic climate of Thatcherism.
Omar Ali is a young man living in Battersea in the Wandsworth area of South London, right by the railway station during the mid-1980s. His father, Hussein (known to the rest of the family as Papa), once a famous left-wing British Pakistani journalist in Bombay, lives in London but hates Britain's society and its international politics. His dissatisfaction with the world and a family tragedy have led him to sink into alcoholism, so that Omar has to be his caregiver. By contrast, Omar's paternal uncle Nasser is a successful entrepreneur and an active member of the London Pakistani community. Papa asks Nasser to give Omar a job and, after working for a brief time as a car washer in one of his uncle's garages, he is assigned the task of managing a run-down laundrette and turning it into a profitable business.
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Wikipedia