Stephen Frears was at the forefront of the British cinematic revival of the mid-1980s, and the delightfully transgressive My Beautiful Laundrette is his greatest triumph of the period. Working from a richly layered script by Hanif Kureishi, who was soon to be an internationally renowned writer, Frears tells an uncommon love story that takes place between a young South London Pakistani man (Gordon Warnecke), who decides to open an upscale laundromat to make his family proud, and his childhood friend, a skinhead (Daniel Day-Lewis, in a breakthrough role) who volunteers to help make his dream a reality. This culture-clash comedy is also a subversive work of social realism that dares to address racism, homophobia, and sociopolitical marginalization in Margaret Thatcher’s England.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• Restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Oliver Stapleton, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Conversation between director Stephen Frears and producer Colin MacCabe
• Interviews with writer Hanif Kureishi, producers Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe, and Stapleton
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Graham Fuller
• New cover by Eric Skillman