My Beautiful Laundrette Blu-ray

'My Beautiful Laundrette' Director: Stephen Frears (1985) Criterion Collection Blu-ray | 2K transfer

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, who decides to open an upscale laundromat to make his family proud, and his childhood friend, a skinhead 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.

Special features include:
- Conversation between director Stephen Frears and producer Colin MacCabe
- Interviews with writer Hanif Kureishi, producers Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe, and Stapleton
- Essay by critic Graham Fuller