My Beautiful Laundrette

• Cat.no: VCD 0010
• Cert: 15
• Running time: 94 minutes
• Year: 1986
• Pressing: 1999
• Region(s): 2, PAL
• Chapters: 16 plus extras
• Sound: Stereo (Dolby Digital 2.0)
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: None
• Widescreen: 1.66:1
• 16:9-enhanced: No
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 5
• Price: £19.99
• Extras : Scene index, Theatrical trailer, Biographies
  

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  Director:

  Stephen Frears

  (Accidental Hero, Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, Mary Reilly, Sammy And Rosie Get Laid, The Snapper, The Tribe, The Van, TV: “The Comic Strip Presents” (1982))

Producers:

Screenplay:

Hanif Kureishi

Cast:

Johnny: Daniel Day-Lewis (The Age Of Innocence, The Boxer, The Bounty, The Crucible, Ghandi, In The Name Of The Father, Last Of The Mohicans, My Left Foot, A Room With A View, Sunday Bloody Sunday, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being)
Omar: Gordon Warnecke (A Fatal Inversion, The Principle Pleasure, TV: “Boon” (1986))
Nasser: Saeed Jaffrey (Ghandi, Guru In Seven, The Man Who Would Be King, A Passage To India, TV: “Coronation Street”, “Jewel In The Crown”)
Papa: Roshan Seth (Ghandi, Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, Little Dorrit, London Kills Me, Mississippi Masala, Slipstream, Street Fighter, TV: “The Buddha Of Suburbia”)
Rachel: Shirley Anne Field (Beat Girl, These Are The Damned, TV: “Lady Chatterly”)

My Beautiful Laundrette broke the mould when first released. While the cover may have you believe this is the simple story of two men opening their own laundrette in the face of the Thatcherite 1980’s, what made the difference was that not only are they of a different race – since the film is set among London’s Asian community – but that this FilmFour release is the first film I can remember featuring homosexual relationships in such a graphic way, but then Channel 4 was set up to cater for aspects of film and television rarely touched upon by others.

The coupling of Omar – taking over from his uncle’s laundrette with intention of turning it into a money-spinner – and his new employer Johnny, a childhood friend and ex-National Front member, is fraught with danger as they face the anger of Johnny’s deserted gang and Omar’s arranged marriage.

The picture quality is slightly grainy at times, usually in areas of light colour. At other times it’s down to the age of the print as it clearly hasn’t been remastered which is a shame. The average bitrate is a high 6.3Mb/s, peaking at 10Mb/s. The film is not presented in anamorphic format, which provides extra resolution with which to benefit widescreen televisions, because at 1.66:1 it is not wide enough for the 16:9 format.

The box is unclear about the ratio though as it states “4:3 Letterbox”, while the “coming soon” booklet states that it is in fullscreen! D’oh!

The Dolby Digital 2.0 (Stereo) soundmix is okay but won’t set your speakers alight.

Extras :

Chapters/Trailer : There are 16 chapters spread throughout the 94-minute film and it could use more. Like other recent VCI titles, the chapter selection menu lists chapters 2-16 as 1-15, as it omits the start of the film. The disc also contains the original theatrical trailer.

Languages/Subtitles :

There’s just the one language on this disc – English – and again there are no subtitles. Why not? Especially when companies like Columbia TriStar are producing DVDs with subtitles in up to 14 languages.

Other extras : An extensive biography for Daniel Day-Lewis, with filmographies for him and Messrs. Warnecke, Jaffrey and director Stephen Frears.

Menu :

The interactive menu works fine and is static, with a small introduction of a spinning title logo and accompanying laundrette sounds! Note that on playing the disc you can’t skip past the VCI logo and copyright info.

Overall, this is a very enjoyable film touching on a subject rarely visited and only really looked at by BBC’s Eastenders and later smashed to smithereens in this year’s Queer As Folk on Channel 4. However, given that DVD is currently the format to end all formats, a better picture should have been sourced. Digital remastering is always ‘all the rage’, hence it should have been employed here, not to mention a decent range of extras.

That said, it doesn’t have any competition DVD-wise, although USA residents will find a widescreen NTSC Laserdisc was released in 1995. FILM : **** PICTURE QUALITY: ***½ SOUND QUALITY: *** EXTRAS: *½ ——————————- OVERALL: ***

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.