Stephen Frears was at the forefront of the British cinematic revival of the mid-1980s, and the delightfully transgressive My Beautiful Laundrette is his greatest triumph of the period. Working from a richly layered script by Hanif Kureishi, who was soon to be an internationally renowned writer, Frears tells an uncommon love story that takes place between a young South London Pakistani man (Gordon Warnecke), who decides to open an upscale laundromat to make his family proud, and his childhood friend, a skinhead (Daniel Day-Lewis, in a breakthrough role) who volunteers to help make his dream a reality. This culture-clash comedy is also a subversive work of social realism that dares to address racism, homophobia, and sociopolitical marginalization in Margaret Thatcher’s England.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New, restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Oliver Stapleton, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New conversation between director Stephen Frears and producer Colin MacCabe
New interviews with writer Hanif Kureishi, producers Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe, and Stapleton
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Graham Fuller
