Movies

A rare instance of magic-realism that actually works in the cinema. The realism is a scrupulously observed portrait of 80s London, its people (entrepreneurs, drunks, racists, wide-boys), locales (dingy flats, delapidated laundrettes, murky car lots) and attitudes (strutting capitalism, dessicated liberalism, farcical extremism).The magic comes from Frears' style, tweaking and heightening the real; from stylised scenes such as Omar's reuniting with Johnny; from some magical set-pieces, especially the opening of the laundrette, Omar and Johnny making love cut with Nasser and Rachel's waltz; from the clashing of an exotic, Oriental world in a determinedly materialist context. Kureishi's script is occasionally heavy-handed, but sex is never far from his analyses of power and identity - Omar's crucial tirade against Johnny has a thrilling, Genet-esque frisson.

Stephen Frears' film of Hanif Kureshi's script about the Pakistani and the NF punk who grew up as friends, and find themselves attracted to each other again. Gordon Warneke and Daniel Day-Lewis play the lovers in this intelligent movie which has a cheap British tinge but has some superb moments (Saeed Jaffrey as Warneke's uncle, ‘a professional businessman, not a professional Pakistani') within it. Perhaps the longest-lasting image is the two boys in the back room of the launderette, splashing each other with water, and putting aside the political differences between them. Whether it truly makes its points about race and sexuality I'm not sure.

For its time MBL was a break through movie. London is a very complicated place for colonials and for punks. As the friendship between the boys develops- complications arise. What I liked about this film was its unpretentiousness. You can hear and almost smell the various neighborhoods of London. And Daniel Day Lewis certainly showed his potential for the star he would become.