My Beautiful Laundrette: Last News

Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, we revisit My Beautiful Laundrette.What aspect of our lives gives us a sense of belonging? Is it our family; the people that raised us? Our group of friends; those who we share interests and passions with? The partner that we decide to marry and spend the rest of our lives with? Our local communities, our country of origin, our religion…? The answer is much more complex that just one or the other.This week we’ll be diving into the seminal 1985 queer romantic drama My Beautiful Laundrette. The film explores the intersections of identity and belonging under the neon signs and shadowy street corners of 1980s London, where its two lead characters are aimlessly looking for a place in the world and find it in each other.My Beautiful Laundrette follows Omar (Gordon Warnecke), a driven young man of Pakistani descent living in London, working under his uncle Nasser’s (Saeed Jaffrey) many businesses while taking care of his alcoholic father (Roshan Seth).