Sammy & Rosie Get Laid Movie Review

Stephen Frears’ Sammy & Rosie Get Laid is every bit as unsettling to viewers as its title was to theatrical exhibitors. This is a densely plotted story about a London couple whose unconventional life is changed when the husband's father arrives on the scene from Pakistan. The father, played by Indian star Shashi Kapoor, is responsible for atrocities back home, but he is unprepared for the war zone he finds in London, following the real-life killing of a black woman by a policeman. American viewers will also find screenwriter Hanif Kureishi's visions of riot-torn streets disturbing. The world of the Queen and her Prime Ministers is one that can be entered only by the most privileged of blacks and Pakistanis, or by the children who offer them flowers. The rest live in a world where violence is always near and where sex is an acceptable escape. Sammy & Rosie is so complex it would benefit from repeated viewings, but the performances by Kapoor, Claire Bloom, and newcomers Ayub Khan Din and Frances Barber are as clear as a bell.

1987 97m/C GB Shashi Kapoor, Frances Barber, Claire Bloom, Ayub Khan Din, Roland Gift, Wendy Gazelle, Meera Syal; D: Stephen Frears; W: Hanif Kureishi; C: Oliver Stapleton; M: Stanley Myers. VHS, LV