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WHAT IT'S ABOUT:

Omar (Gordon Warnecke) is a young Pakistani Londoner who gets a shot at living the capitalist dream when his mob-connected Uncle Nasser (Jaffrey) asks him to manage a ramshackle laundromat-and turn a profit. Soon after taking over, Omar runs into old school chum Johnny (Day-Lewis), now a working-class thug affiliated with the fascist National Front. Omar hires him despite his odious ideology, and the two become partners, and lovers.

WHY I LOVE IT:

Originally made for the BBC, and scripted by half-Pakistani writer Hanif Kureishi, Frears's endearing, intelligent "Laundrette" is a dramatic and often humorous study of bigotry, sexuality, and social mobility in Thatcher-era Britain. Warnecke and Day-Lewis are convincing as distinct social types in eighties London-the striving immigrant under pressure to acculturate on one hand and marry a family acquaintance on the other; and the skinhead who turns on his mates to pursue a friendship with a loathsome "Paki." Coaxing fine support from his multiracial cast, Frears handles it all with tenderness, insight, and unpredictable tonal shifts.

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