My Beautiful Laundrette

As a cinematic examination of postcolonial Britain, Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette, written by Hanif Kureishi, Here, I will discuss the ways in which the film explores postcolonial identity, particularly in relation to the politics of gender, questions of sexuality and the family unit, as well as the cultural connotations that are inherent across each of these. 

In the production, Frears takes the approach of the postmodernist, examining the social structures and cultural identity of Thatcher’s England in a realist fashion, offering a narrative centred upon anti-heroes that hides from its viewers the judgements of the storyteller. This notion is supported by Hill, who links Kureishi’s work in the film to “ideas about the constructedness and fluidity of social identities promoted in postmodern thinking and suggests that such formulations are helpful in accounting for the strong sense of the criss-crossed nature of identities”