UCI SOCIETY OFFERS BRITISH FILM FARE

Two acclaimed movies of 1986, “My Beautiful Laundrette” and “Mona Lisa,” head the list of contemporary British films to be screened in the UC Irvine Film Society’s winter series beginning this week.

Ross Goo, a senior at UCI and one of four directors of the university’s film society, said one reason for focusing on recent British cinema is that the films selected have received little or no exposure in Orange County. Also, past UCI series have sometimes featured older films, and the society directors wanted to draw more audience members from outside the university by featuring newer films, Goo said.

“We try and stay on top of what the public would like to see that isn’t already exposed” in Orange County, Goo said. The society is organizing a series focusing on women directors for the school’s spring quarter.

In director Stephen Frears’ “My Beautiful Laundrette,” which opens the series on Friday, Gordon Warnecke (as the son of a Pakistani immigrant) and Daniel Day Lewis (as a street punk) team up to revive a rundown self-service laundry in South London and become lovers in the process. The satirical romance, written by Hanif Kureishi, takes a look at race, class, sexuality and economics in contemporary London and examines the lives of the city’s still-outcast Pakistani population.

Lewis was voted the year’s best supporting actor (for his work in “Laundrette” and “A Room With a View”) by the New York Film Critics Circle, which also named Kureishi best screenwriter. “My Beautiful Laundrette” was second behind France’s “Vagabond” in voting for best foreign film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

Bob Hoskins, in a performance voted the best of the year by both the Los Angeles and New York critics, plays a tough ex-con in “Mona Lisa,” which screens Jan. 16. Fresh out of prison, he goes back to work for his old boss (played by Michael Caine) as driver and bodyguard for an elegant call girl played by Cathy Tyson. The unlikely pair search for the call girl’s friend, a child hooker who has disappeared. “Mona Lisa” was directed and co-written (with David Leland) by Neil Jordan.

Films will be shown each Friday through March 6 at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. in the school’s Social Science Hall. Following is a screening schedule for the series:

--Friday: “My Beautiful Laundrette.”

--Jan. 16: “Mona Lisa.”

--Jan. 23: “Insignificance” (1985). Nicholas Roeg directed this film in which four characters, loosely modeled on Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, baseball great Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein, meet on a night in New York, 1953, and discuss global concerns.

--Jan. 30: “Caravaggio” (1986). Director Derek Jarman creates a highly personal view of the life of the 16th-Century Italian artist, whose Renaissance ideals, expressed in his paintings, were tainted by scandal in his private life.

--Feb. 6: “Lady Jane” (1986). The marriage and nine-day reign of the 15-year-old queen of England, Lady Jane Grey (played by newcomer Helena Bonham Carter), is brought to the screen by director Trevor Nunn, head of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

--Feb. 13: “The Girl in the Picture” (1986). John Gordon-Sinclair, who played the gangly title character in the 1980 Scottish coming-of-age comedy “Gregory’s Girl,” portrays a photographer trying to rekindle a romance with his one-time lover (Irina Brook) in this film directed by Cary Parker.

--Feb. 20: “1984” (1984). George Orwell’s 1949 tale of an oppressive and totalitarian society of the future is revisited by writer/director Michael Radford, in a film starring John Hurt and Suzanna Hamilton as the ill-fated lovers and Richard Burton--in his last film performance--as the evil Inner Party member.

--Feb. 27: “Another Country” (1984). Julian Mitchell’s adaptation of his successful play, directed by Marek Kanievska, takes place in the upper-middle-class public schools of 1930s England. Rupert Everett plays Guy Bennett (a role based on real-life Soviet spy Guy Burgess), whose experiences in the school led to the eventual betrayal of his country.

--March 6: “Dance With a Stranger” (1985). Director Mike Newell based this film on the fatal 1950s love affair between divorced working mother Ruth Ellis (Miranda Richardson) and aristocratic race car driver David Blakely (Rupert Everett).