This movie is so worth it. It would be worth it if it were just an hour and a half about a sprawling British-Pakistani family’s business and personal ventures in 1985 London. It would be worth it if it were just for young Daniel Day Lewis as a South London punk with his sleeves pushed up five inches past his elbows. It would be worth it for anything anyone in this movie says about politics or the immigrant experience or economics or education or, incidentally, worth. It would be worth it just for how well it serves its female characters. It would be worth it just for Tania, honestly.

But My Beautiful Laundrette is worth it for all these things, and more. Let’s say: the moment when suddenly, softly, Johnny takes Omar’s face in his hands and kisses him deeply in the shadows of an alley, and even though you know this is coming, all the pieces in your heart fall into place at the sight. Do you know what’s the 1980s period update on Maurice‘s gay British class porn I didn’t know I needed? Sweet, ambitious young Pakistani laundromat owner in his little suits, teasingly ordering around his lease-less, devoted white boyfriend who’s fixing up his shop for him, for them, a spot of blue paint on his cheek. And because it’s My Beautiful Laundrette, they’ll even talk and flirt and fight about their criss-crossing class differences, because My Beautiful Laundrette goes all in always.

Now I’ll admit there’s something a little off in the editing that does I feel jumble up the emotional flow at times. It’s that slightly thrown feeling you get from missing a reaction shot we needed, or taking too long with one thing and then not long enough with something else. I desperately wanted to fix certain sequences, which speaks to the rest of the movie’s power I think, that I too felt so devoted to making this thing work.