《我的美丽洗衣店》导演斯蒂芬·弗雷斯谈经典之作的遗产

IT’S PART OF My Beautiful Laundrette mythology that screenwriter Hanif Kureishi presented the screenplay to Stephen Frears by simply dropping it through the director’s Notting Hill letterbox. This is true. Although the filmmaker’s initial impression was not favourable. “When I started to read it and realised it was about immigrants, my heart rather sank,” says Frears, of the origins of his 1985 classic. “You saw an awful lot of work which had a slightly do-gooding quality with liberal intentions. But once I started to laugh, I realised how original, subversive and sophisticated it was. It was about the Pakistani middle class, which nobody knew anything about, or indeed knew existed. The mocking of Thatcher I enjoyed enormously.” …