Letter to Brezhnev is a 1985

1985 in film

-Events:* 3 December - Roger Moore steps down from the role of James Bond after twelve years and seven films. He is replaced by Timothy Dalton.* The Academy Award for Best Picture was won by Out Of Africa, while the highest grossing film was Back to the Future.* Bliss wins AFI Award for best Movie...

 British

Cinema of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...

 comedy film

Comedy film

Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 about working class life in contemporary Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

. It was written by Frank Clarke and directed by Chris Bernard

Chris Bernard

Chris Bernard is an English film director. He has directed eight films since 1985.He was born in Liverpool, England and started his professional career in the theatre...

. It starred Alfred Molina

Alfred Molina

Alfred Molina is a British-born American actor. He first came to public attention in the UK for his supporting role in the 1987 film Prick Up Your Ears...

, Peter Firth

Peter Firth

Peter Firth is an English actor. He is best known for his role as Sir Harry Pearce in the BBC show Spooks, of which he is the only actor to have starred in every episode of the show's 10 series lifespan...

, Tracy Lea, Alexandra Pigg

Alexandra Pigg

Alexandra Pigg is a British actress who first came to prominence as Petra Taylor in the TV soap opera Brookside. Her best known film appearances are as Elaine in Letter to Brezhnev , for which she was nominated for a BAFTA award, and as Bridget Baines in A Chorus of Disapproval...

, Margi Clarke

Margi Clarke

Margi Clarke is a British actress . She was born in Liverpool and raised in Kirkby , and is known for her Scouse accent and platinum-blonde hair.-Early career:...

 amongst others. Letter To Brezhnev presents Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

's high-unemployment

Unemployment

Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...

 Liverpool as a dangerous and near hopeless city.

Two Liverpool young women, Teresa and Elaine, meet two Russian sailors, Sergei and Peter, and hook up for a night of fun and frolics. Teresa is looking for sex and a smile, Elaine wants love, romance and the dream of a life far away from the grime of the Liverpool docklands.

Amongst other themes, it reflects the constraints on working class

Working class

Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...

 women's dreams. It also shows that many people do not get the chance to aspire to anything other than the humdrum lives they find before them as they walk away from school. Some of the characters worked in what they called "the chicken

Chicken

The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird...

 factory", a slaughterhouse

Slaughterhouse

A slaughterhouse or abattoir is a facility where animals are killed for consumption as food products.Approximately 45-50% of the animal can be turned into edible products...

.

For the soundtrack for the movie Sandie Shaw

Sandie Shaw

Sandie Shaw is an English pop singer, who was one of the most successful British female singers of the 1960s. In 1967 she was the first UK act to win the Eurovision Song Contest...

 re-recorded the song "Always Something There to Remind Me". Also on the soundtrack was the Bronski Beat

Bronski Beat

Bronski Beat were a popular British synthpop trio who achieved success in the mid 1980s, particularly with the 1984 chart hit "Smalltown Boy". All members of the group were openly homosexual and their songs reflected this, often containing political commentary on gay-related issues...

 song "Hit That Perfect Beat

Hit That Perfect Beat

-Charts:...

" which was a hit in Australia and the UK.