UK, 2008, 101 min.

Director: Sarah Gavron
Writer: Monica Ali, Laura Jones
Cast: Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik, Christopher Simpson
Release: 2008/06/20

	Brick Lane (Trailer)

Nazneen’s life is turned upside down at the tender age of seventeen. Forced into an arranged marriage to an older man, she exchanges her Bangladeshi village home for a block of flats in London’s East End. In this new world, pining for her home and her sister, she struggles to make sense of her existence – and to do her duty to her husband. A man of inflated ideas (and stomach), he sorely tests her compliance. Told from birth that she must not fight her fate, Nazneen submits, devoting her life to raising her family and slapping down her demons of discontent. Until the day that Karim, a hot-headed local man, bursts into her life. Against a background of escalating racial tension, they embark on an affair that finally forces Nazneen to take control of her life. Set in multicultural Britain, Brick Lane is a truly contemporary story of love, cultural difference, and ultimately, the strength of the human spirit.


Review by Neil Smith (BBC)

Not winning the Booker Prize didn't prevent Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal and Ian McEwan's Atonement spawning successful movies this year. Now Monica Ali's Brick Lane - shortlisted, like Scandal, for the 2003 prize - makes its own way to the big screen in a delicately handled adaptation from director Sarah Gavron. Don't expect too many surprises, though, from this low-key story of a Bangladeshi woman who learns to stand on her own two feet after years of stultifying arranged marriage.

Forced at the tender age of 17 to exchange her native village for a rundown housing estate in east London, Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) stoically knuckles down to her new life as reluctant wife to Chanu (Satish Kaushik), an obese dullard with ideas as big as his corns. Rarely straying beyond her cluttered flat in Tower Hamlets, she spends her days pining for home, dodging an elderly money-lender (Lalita Ahmed) and sewing jeans for dashing market trader Karim (Christopher Simpson). In the wake of 9/11, though, the certainties on which her world is based begin to crumble, forcing her to take a stand against her overbearing husband and two rebellious daughters.

"MEASURED, SENSITIVE AND CONVENTIONAL"

Given the angry protests that scuppered plans to shoot in the real Brick Lane and the subsequent decision to nix the film's Royal Command Performance, one might expect Gavron's drama to be a far more contentious affair. Those who objected to its production, though, will find little to vex them in a measured, sensitive and ultimately rather conventional depiction of one woman's hard-won coming of age.Brick Lane (Trailer)