A vision of England amidst a massive breakdown, or in other words amidst the Margaret Thatcher regime. The range of targets is broad, and the shot-pattern uneven. There is an interracial married couple, an interracial lesbian couple, a socially conscious American photographer, a middle-class suburban widow, an unemployed black man, a Third World despot, even a one-eyed Third World ghost -- all mixed together with a modernist disregard for credibility. The married couple -- Paki man and Brit woman, whose liberal-chic credo is "Freedom plus commitment" -- make the best targets. ("If you had your choice of sleeping with Virginia Woolf or George Eliot," the wife quizzes the husband, "who would you choose?") The characters to the right of this couple are broadsided more straightforwardly, humorlessly. And the ones to the left escape unscathed. Stephen Frears, the highly skilled director, gives the thing a look of greater reality than it can quite use. Written by Hanif Kureishi, who did Frears's My Beautiful Laundrette; with Shashi Kapoor, Frances Barber, and Claire Bloom. (1987) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.