Themes: Interracial/Cross-Cultural Romance, Political Corruption, Infidelity
Main Cast: Shashi Kapoor, Frances Barber, Claire Bloom, Ayub Khan Din, Roland Gift
Release Year: 1987
Country: UK
Run Time: 97 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
In this alternately comic and grave reflection on the effects of Thatcherism on polyethnic England, middle-class liberals Rosie (Frances Barber) and Sammy (Ayub Khan Din) engage in an openly adulterous marriage while living in a lower-class neighborhood in London. When they're not hiding their troubled marriage behind a series of "enlightened" affairs, the couple associates with a social circle that ranges from leftist to radical and includes enigmatic street philosopher Victoria (Roland Gift). Sammy's long-lost father, Rafi (Shashi Kapoor), a South Asian politician, arrives for a visit just as rioting erupts in response to the killing of an innocent black woman by British police. Rafi decries not only the social upheaval that has transformed the country where he spent his halcyon university years, but also the lack of propriety on display in his son's marriage. Admitting that he's on the run for allegedly corrupt and violent political activities, the well-mannered yet manipulative Rafi uses his wealth to try to reign in what he sees as Sammy and Rosie's sexual and political excesses. Meanwhile, he tries to court Alice (Claire Bloom), the proper British lady he deserted decades earlier. The messy whirl of desire, resentment, and dogma that alternately throws these characters together and rips them apart ultimately reflects the confused and confusing society in which Sammy and Rosie live; soon even the unassailable Rafi must question his beliefs about life after empire. Sammy and Rosie Get Laid marked the second collaboration between director Stephen Frears and writer Hanif Kureishi; star Ayub Khan Din would go on to write another Anglo-Asian culture-clash comedy, 1998's East Is East. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Review
Messier and less sure-footed than the exquisite My Beautiful Laundrette, this second Stephen Frears/Hanif Kureishi collaboration provides plenty of provocative scenarios through which to explore 1980s London in all of its ethnic, sexual, financial, and political complexity. Kureishi's hip, conflicted characters and Frears' deadpan eye for urban absurdity maintain a likably loopy mood as the film shifts fluidly from street riots to righteous parties. Frears keeps the visual palette funky, too, with imagery that ranges from the documentary to the hallucinatory and includes a triple split-screen sex scene. As for the fine cast, they do their best to bring the film's tangled issues to life, from Frances Barber as the wry, resigned Rosie to Fine Young Cannibals singer Roland Gift as the enigmatic Victoria. Such indelible characters cannot, however, save Sammy and Rosie Get Laid from its own overstuffed ambitions. Despite the script's repeated jabs at the title characters' liberal slumming, the film itself sometimes seems to treat its politics as so much chic window dressing; perhaps the script's weighty issues just don't gel well with its trendy trappings. At any rate, Laundrette's sense of questions asked and answered is mostly missing, and it would be simply too convenient to chalk up this oversight to postmodern uncertainty. The truth is, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid is a gorgeous muddle, one that sacrifices a clear thesis in its rush to catalog the shifting mores and looming crises of a British society still coming to grips with colonialism, Thatcherism, and the sexual revolution. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
David McHenry - Art Director, Barbara Kidd - Costume Designer, Guy Travers - First Assistant Director, Stephen Frears - Director, Mick Audsley - Editor, Stanley Myers - Composer (Music Score), Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski - Production Designer, Oliver Stapleton - Cinematographer, Tim Bevan - Producer, Sarah Radclyffe - Producer, Albert Bailey - Sound/Sound Designer, Hanif Kureishi - Screenwriter, Tony Hester - Gaffer
Sammy (Ayub Khan-Din) and Rosie (Frances Barber) are husband and wife, both leading a promiscuous bohemian lifestyle until Sammy's father (Shashi Kapoor) comes to visit to escape "past issues".
Analysis
Sammy and Rosie get laid has several recurring themes, including:
Parents living through their children.
Children repeating their parents' mistakes.
"Tit for tat" affairs in marriage being damaging to both parties of the relationships, and the cycle only being broken by forgiveness.
Sex without love being unfulfilling and ultimately destructive.
