There's a Riot Goin' On | SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID (1987)

dir. Stephen Frears (DANGEROUS LIAISONS); screenplay by Hanif Kureishi

Can you pass me the human rights violations, please?

The writer/director team that brought the gay classic MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (1985) swings out a doozy of a film that encapsulates the street rage of Thatcher-era London, festooned with the sexual and class identity politics of the time, couching the story of a couple on the brink, the touching open-relationship romance of the title characters Sammy (Ayub Khan-Din) and Rosie (Frances Barber).  They are put to the ultimate stress when Sammy's father Rafi (Shashi Kapoor), a human-rights-violating Pakistani head-of-state, moves into their South London flat to escape assassination.  This precipitates by virtue of a tapestry of juxtapositions a delicious comedy of errors served by a well-scripted dialogue abounding in very British fashion with loads of witty banter and brainy quips. 

Also copious, the fantastic music, a soundtrack of background and in situ selections that showcases the times (the mid-80s fascination with American hip-hop music and street style) and the place (imports from the colonies like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Jamaican reggae cuts).

Fine Young Cannibals lead singer Roland Gift turns in a fine performance in his first movie role as Danny/ Victoria, bravely lending his ass as a curvy counterbalance to the opening scenes of white girl booty, the one famously tattooed with W's on each cheek (guess what it spells when she bends over?).  That's just one of the pairings that frames the film, others being a couple of unrelated suicides, and two Thatcher overdubs ringing contemptuously out of touch with the images of an economically depressed and socially disintegrating London.  

Unmissable are Frear's rendition of the Brixton Riots, Virginia Woolf's portrait in flames, the omni-present ambulant  street band of urchins, and the disfigured ghost of a cab driver (Badi Uzzaman) portentously milling about town.

With so much being bandied about, SAMMY AND ROSIE could have been a very disjointed piece.  Instead Frears renders an artful, intricate construct, delivering a multifaceted layer of readings and a rich tapestry of situations in a film that truly utilizes the tropes of its medium to the utmost end.

Fair warning:  This Youtube upload literally pauses to a blue screen for a bit at 22m and at 1h:25m there's some VHS-style glitchiness.  Still,  SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID is such a hard-to-find movie that it's worth getting through these petty issues which do nothing to diminish the glory of all its juicy details.

So get it while it's up at: