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'Brick Lane' movingly shows Muslim woman lost in London

Katjusa Cisar  —  10/03/2008 11:31 am

Adapted from Monica Ali's 2003 novel, "Brick Lane" tells the moving story of an immigrant Muslim woman in London who confronts the anguish of finding a homeland while living between two cultures.

Nazneen (played with wide-eyed subtlety by Tannishtha Chatterjee) left Bangladesh at 16 for an arranged marriage in London, leaving behind a younger sister. The core of the film's action takes place when Nazneen is about 33, living with two teenage daughters and her bumbling husband Chanu (Satish Kaushik). She's a sad, withdrawn woman. Her only solace is a regular exchange of letters with her sister, who has led a carefree life without the constraints of an arranged marriage.

As Nazneen slips though the drab streets of London, she is often lost in her colorful, vibrant memories of Bangladesh. She endures her life, perhaps in a resolve not to turn out like her mother. "What cannot be changed must be borne," her mother had told them, but she was unable to bear her own life and drowned herself when the sisters were young.

Into this desperate world saunters Karim (Christopher Simpson), a handsome young guy who delivers fabric to immigrant women throughout Nazneen's apartment complex. Nazneen sews and sells piles of jeans out of the fabric, resolved to make enough money to return to Bangladesh.

Karim, also of Bangladeshi blood, has never known his home country and is thoroughly British. "My Islam is in here," he tells her, pointing to his chest. But he idealizes Nazneen as the beautiful "girl from the village," the uncorrupted symbol of his ancestral roots. The two of them begin a feverish affair together, meeting during the day while Chanu is at work.

Then planes hit the twin towers in New York City, and life changes for Muslims like Karim and Nazneen's family. Karim grows a beard and gets more involved in community activism, leading vitriolic and fear-ridden town hall meetings with other Muslim men.

At this point, the film gets a bit muddy. The details of how exactly life changes for the Muslim population in London is somewhat contrived, seemingly born out of stereotypes and sensationalistic headlines rather than the subtlety of personal experience.

Not surprisingly, things fall apart between young Karim and Nazneen, who experiences a slow transformation and discovers where her true homeland lies. In the end, this is not the usual story of a bored housewife finding excitement and power in an affair. The affair is nonetheless a catalyst for a change in Nazneen that is not predictable and sheds some light on the complex experiences of immigrants.

In general, director Sarah Gavron keeps the story from falling into syrupy cliches. But, as is typical with films culled from books, she gets a bit lost following too many threads in the story, and the ending feels inconclusive and hastily tied up.

Brick Lane

3 stars

Stars: Tannishtha Chatterjee, Christopher Simpson

Rated: PG-13 for language and sexuality

How long: 1:41

Where: Sundance

Katjusa Cisar  —  10/03/2008 11:31 am