Omar, a young, unemployed British-Pakistani,
cares for his ailing, alcoholic, socialist father in a decaying South London
ground-floor flat overlooking a crumbling rail track. His father (known as Papa
to everyone in the family) urges him to go to college, but in the meantime gets
him a job washing cars in his Uncle Nasser's garage. Half jokingly, Papa also
asks Nasser to find him a girlfriend.
At his uncle's garage, Omar meets Nasser's
white mistress, Rachel, and his business partner Salim. Nasser is impressed by
Omar's business sense and ambition and gives him the responsibility of running
his dilapidated laundrette.
Omar breaks the news to his father that he has
been promoted to manager of the laundrette and in his excitement tries to
contact Johnny. Meanwhile, he runs an errand for Salim, picking up some
pornographic? videotapes and bringing them back to his house. Catching Omar
watching one of these tapes, an angry Salim knocks him to the floor and
violently bruises both of his eyes with his foot.
Johnny agrees to help Omar renovate the
laundrette and Omar, in need of further funds to finance the laundrette, agrees
to pick up some drugs for Salim. However, Omar and Johnny decide to keep the
drugs to sell.
Meanwhile, Nasser agrees to let Johnny into the
business if he helps him evict some unwanted tenants. Johnny and Omar begin
work on the laundrette and become lovers. Johnny discovers members of the gang
vandalizing laundrette dustbins. They demand to know why Johnny has betrayed
them by working for Omar and his family. With Johnny's help, Nasser evicts a
West-Indian poet from one of his properties and offers the room to Johnny,
which he takes.
At Powders Laundrette's grand opening, Nasser
nags Omar to marry Tania and he agrees in order to keep the peace. Johnny
overhears and leaves. Tania confronts Rachel for the first time about the
affair with her father. Salim, who has realised that the laundrette has been
financed by the missing drugs, threatens Omar with closure of the laundrette if
he doesn't pay him by Nasser's annual party. But a few days later, when Omar
offers Salim an installment of his debt, Salim tells him that he never really
wanted the money but wanted to teach him a lesson.
After the laundrette is opened, Omar notices
that Johnny has left, goes to look for him in his room, and orders him to get
back to work. Johnny returns to the laundrette. Papa, Omar's father, mistakenly
turns up for the opening ceremony at 2 am instead of 2pm. He confronts Johnny
about his neo-Nazi past (when Johnny used to racially taunt him), asking if,
since then, he has made anything of himself. Sensing the power of Johnny's
influence over his son, Papa asks him to impress on Omar the importance of
getting an education.
Tania turns up at the laundrette to tell Johnny
she is leaving home. Unable to persuade him to join her, she leaves alone.
Rachel and Nasser break up and seeking comfort, Nasser visits his brother,
Papa.
Congregating at the laundrette, Johnny's old
gang wait for the opportunity to smash up Salim's car. They beat him up and,
when Johnny comes to Salim's aid, attack him too. When Omar arrives, a gang
member throws a lump of wood through the window of the laundrette. The gang
flee at the sound of police sirens, and Omar dresses Johnny's wounds in the
back office of the laundrette.
©www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/443819/synopsis.html
Academic
year 2008/2009
©
a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Giuseppe
Improta
imgiu@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de
Valčncia Press