We Were Shagged Out.

That's right, another Daniel Day Lewis film. Looking him up, I remembered that I've always wanted to see My Beautiful Laundrette, and never had.

Day Lewis plays a supporting role as Johnny in this 1985 feature from Stephen Frears (who did The Queen), playing below Gordon Warnecke as Omar. (I love watching older films, when you see otherwise huge above the line names in today's world credited somewhere in the middle of the pack. I love remembering that they weren't always stars.) Omar is of Pakistani heritage and soon set to start studying, at the behest of his father Ali (Roshan Seth.) In the meantime he is simply spending time around the house, looking after his alcoholic ex-journalist father. Ali sets Omar up with a job with family, working for Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey) who runs an auto-repair workshop. Omar is soon promoted to managing a laundrette that Nasser also owns, though he negotiates a deal whereby he runs the shop, pays Nasser a fixed rent, and banks the profits.


Meanwhile he has run into an old school-friend and gang member Johnny, and the two have struck up a friendship that quickly develops into something more. Omar is hiding this from his family, so the opportunity for Johnny to leave his gang and help Omar develop the laundrette into something spectacular (as far as laundrettes go) is too perfect for them to give up - they get to spend enormous amounts of time together, alone, with cause.


The business goes well and Omar becomes quite cut-throat. Johnny is effectively destitute without Omar to support him, and Omar takes on a massive power ego, controlling Johnny as well. However, after Johnny is set upon by his ex-gang, the two reconcile. The ending is left beautifully open - they are obviously together, however the may appear to be mismatched, but the question of how long they will stay happy together remains.


All of the performances here are fantastic. Day Lewis, as always, exceptional, but the supports from a primarily subcontinental cast back him up strongly, while Warnecke carries the film very well. The grittiness of the world both of them inhabit (different kinds of underworld, but the underworld nonetheless) is very well portrayed, shot by Oliver Stapleton. It was also nice to see queer cinema told well, not preaching, not trying to make any sort of political point, and not steeped in historicism. (Well, watching it now it's historical, but at the time it was current.) Refreshingly, the Omar/Johnny relationship is not in any way a driving point of the film, really, nor does it cause any great turmoil. Despite the fact that it's closeted, it just is. And that doesn't happen all that often.


3.5 stars again.

For The Record

I quite like our dearest Queen Betty the Second. I think her existence is... nice. Truly. I like the tradition and the formality and the fact that, in reality, there is no true point to her. I like that. Like Victoria Beckham, but with more longevity and probably a bit more poise. (Though don't get me started on Victoria Beckham - mostly I'm in love with her because she just shouldn't exist. And the fact that she does is hysterical.)

But this is not the point. The point is that I've added The Queen to my ticked off list of films that I have watched in the early stages of this marathon.

Stephen Frears' 2006 film gave the Helen Mirren an Oscar for her titular role, and was, in its own quiet and very British way, a little controversial in its examination of the week following the death of the people's princess, Lady Di. Mirren's Betty II and family (James Cromwell as Prince Philip, Alex Jennings as Prince Charles, Sylvia Sims as the Queen Mother) decided to treat the untimely and enormously publicised death as a private matter until her popularity plummeted and, at the behest of Michael Sheen's Tony Blair (newly elected as PM of the ol' UK), decided to return to Buck Pal to make a statement and appear with her people.

I think the real appeal of this film was the fact that it delved into the protocol of the Crown here in England. Dealing with the death of a former royal was 'unprecedented.' The royal family (I'm sure that's meant to be capitalised, but it looked funny so I changed it) didn't see it as appropriate because she was no longer a royal, despite the fact that she was the mother of the third (and, I assume, fourth) in line to the throne. The Queen wouldn't even let Prince Chuck take the royal plane to Paris when Di was in hospital because it wasn't a matter of state. (Please note that all of this is based on what happened in the film - I'm not sure what was fudged.)

However, dear Betty was, technically, correct, I imagine, in saying and behaving the way she did. In terms of protocol. What she had failed to realise is that Di was at the forefront of massive celebrity culture around the world. Coins were minted in the honour of her wedding back in '81. She was followed relentlessly by paparazzi. And she died tragically, suddenly and unexpectedly at the height of another scandal.

This is what the film portrays. A monarch who at that point had been on the throne for 45 years, and hadn't managed to keep up with the way the public were now behaving. Protocol be damned! Put up the standard at Buck Pal and then lower it to half-mast, goddamit, because that's what we want! And then the tabloids keep going and going, running it until the public is at near breaking point.

Mirren does dear Betty very well. Not much of what you imagine (or hope) must be inside the real person escapes in any large fashion, but glimpses are allowed through her incredibly stoic exterior to give an almost humanising portrayal of one of the biggest closed-books I know of. Sheen was an amazing support (almost lead... almost) with his Blair portrayal, coming up against party politics, his young relationship with the Queen as her appointee to lead the country, and against his own wife's differing opinions.

I did, however, find myself at the end of the film without a great deal to say about it. It was a nice film, anchored by a couple of great performances and an interesting story that I remember vividly, but it just didn't seem to... do anything. Which was fine. But I think it was ultimately a piece designed around the exploration of a character who can't really be explored that deeply without making things up - obviously, that wouldn't have gone down well.

Frears has made some better films, I think. His previous, Mrs Henderson Presents (with her TRUE highness, Judi Dench) I adored much more than The Queen. It was a nice film, similar to the Queen's existence, but I'm not ranking it much higher than that. 3 stars.