This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: August 5, 2008 - "Home," "fate" and "love" are words that grow in meaning over the course of "Brick Lane," which follows the life of a Bangladeshi Muslim woman in London. The beautiful Nazneem (Tannishtha Chatterjee) is sent at 17 from her native rice paddies to marry a man 20 years her senior. The action takes place during a fateful year when Nazneem's husband comes to the end of his employment tether and decides to move the family back "home."
Their two London-born daughters see "home" differently, and the elder daughter, a rebellious teenager, speaks openly to her shocked father as Nazneem is torn between.
The husband could easily have seemed a monster or a buffoon, but "Brick Lane" is too wise for that. He innocently thinks that he will "get on" at his office because he has read Thackeray, Hume and Proust. This proud man is reduced to driving a minibus while Nazneem takes in sewing to make ends meet.
Through her piecework for a garment factory, she meets a handsome young man who fancies her. While she thinks of her childhood during sex with her husband, her lover is another matter. The sex is handled with great delicacy and tenderness. Director Sarah Gavron is to be commended for that and many other good decisions.
Most of the action takes place in the family's claustrophobic flat in a housing project on Brick Lane. London's East End throws Muslim immigrants into housing with resentful whites. Nazneem mostly keeps to herself, but she finds a confidante in a cigarette-smoking, short-haired fellow immigrant woman. After Sept. 11, whites become violent, radicalizing the Muslim youth in a tragic hatred-begets-hatred dynamic. Nazneem's assimilated lover stops wearing jeans and polo shirt and dons skullcap and kurta. It's painful to watch.
But this is mostly Nazneem's story. Her mother, a suicide, always told her to accept her fate as a woman. Nazneem's stoicism is sorely tested. Frustratingly, we learn little about the younger sister who was left behind and who plays such a large role in Nazneem's mental life. However, Abi Morgan and Laura Jones do an almost perfect job of rendering Monica Ali's novel for the screen.
"Brick Lane," which continues through Thursday at Plaza Frontenac, is a beautiful and unpredictable portrait of a woman in personal and cultural crisis.
View the film's trailer here .