Debutant feature director Sarah Gavron has received a lot of good press for this effort. BAFTA and the London Film Critics Circle in particular have put her name forward in the ‘Most Promising Newcomer’ category for this story about the relationships between family members, immigrants and their new homelands.
Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee), a young Bangladeshi woman, is forced to relocate to 1980s London due to an arranged marriage. Her life descends into loveless matrimony in an unfamiliar world she desperately wants to leave, while she struggles to accept the discontented existence that fate has bestowed upon her. That is, until local hothead Karim comes into her life. An affair ensues, one that forces Nazneen to confront the disparities between the realities of her new life and the hope for something better. Expect a tearjerker in a hostile racial environment.
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Ryan's luscious cinematography may have been intended to be ironically beautiful, given the somewhat scruffy environs, but the images generally soften and even romanticize the kind of setting class-conscious Brit films are usually skilled at capturing with strong, realistic strokes.
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Tannishtha Chatterjee, known in India for film and theatre work, is excellent as the vulnerable, isolated young woman who gradually builds herself into a resilient survivor who can smile and tame the pain of her world. She takes to heart her mother's mantra, that the test of life is to endure. She does that, but by the end of the film, she does more than endure; she overcomes.
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The film rings true but is socially on the thin side. It would probably have been better as a TV mini-series, as were two comparable novels on similar themes, Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia and Zadie Smith's White Teeth.
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Every main character is fully rounded, and even the most minor ones add to the flavour.
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Visually, the film (shot by the man who did the recent good-looking Glasgow stalker thriller Red Road) is enchanting, particularly in the gloomy interiors; the performances are terrific (Begum as Nazneen's eye-rolling teenager is a knockout); the love scenes are electric. But, sincere and serious though it is, it adds up to less than the sum of its parts.
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This beautifully shot film is a confronting story of love, marriage, and what it means to be a woman, regardless of your culture or homeland. The performances are top-notch across the board, and this is an assured outing for director Sarah Gavron.
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Those [protestors] 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.
Full reviewBrick Lane is available to stream in Australia now on Apple TV and SBS On Demand.
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