Where it's going all seems predetermined, but the visual journey is lovely, Robbie Ryan's camera turning even council-housing London into something optically enchanting.
Comment
06/20/08
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Brick Lane (2008)
65
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:93
Fresh:60
Rotten:33
Average Rating:6.1/10
Consensus: Frustratingly slow-moving, but ultimately saved by Chatterjee's solid acting and Gavron's gentle patience.
Theatrical Release:Jun 20, 2008 Limited
Box Office: $1,010,010
Synopsis: 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... [More]
Starring: Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik, Christopher Simpson, Naeema Begum
Director: Sarah Gavron
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Reviews for Brick Lane
Top CriticMonica Ali’s rich, assured 2003 debut novel about the Bangladeshi Muslim diaspora in London is adequately served, but the decisions of cowriters Abi Morgan and Laura Jones too often turn Ali’s complex prose into the predictable.
06/18/08
Every conceivable choice on this film was met with the most obvious answer, and every turn comes right out of other movies.
06/07/08
The film is full of fabrics and shimmer and embroiderings of light and colour, giving a slender story the shy blush of art.
11/15/07
A sense of isolation and struggle for identity in an oppressive culture wash away superfluous formula, leaving a lovely tranquility in their wake.
06/24/08
Sarah Gavron's adaptation of Monica Ali's novel is a thoughtful and often evocative drama of identity and assimilation...
07/03/08
Sarah Gavron's adaptation of Monica Ali's novel is a thoughtful and often evocative drama of identity and assimilation...
07/03/08
The slant is feminist, but the most interesting character is not the saintly and long-suffering wife but her initially ridiculous husband (wonderfully played by Satish Kaushik).
08/08/08
While the film tackles the issue of what the concept of 'home' means for expats and emigrants, it can also be seen as a coming-of-age story for a woman in her mid-30s.
07/09/08
Top CriticFeels as average as an ordinary TV movie.
06/19/08
It's a hard heart that isn't immersed by this delicately told tale.
11/14/07
As long as Brick Lane remains focused on Nazneen, it succeeds admirably.
09/19/08
Gavron's movie finds an unfashionably gentle, human optimism in the face of all this, and a sympathetic performance from Chatterjee makes it plausible.
11/16/07
Brick Lane is lovely to look at and the performances, particularly from Chatterjee and Kaushik, are delightful.
10/18/08
A poetic and sensitive drama about a Bangladesh village girl's life in England and her valiant struggle to stand on her own in the world with a full and grateful heart
06/20/08
The director, Sarah Gavron, came through documentaries and BBC TV drama. This is her first feature and she makes the film very sensual, as well as highly controlled.
03/21/08
Monica Ali’s expansive, epic best seller about decades in the life of a sheltered wife from Bangladesh in the titular London neighborhood is transformed into a compact, delicate tale of adultery, extremism, and awakening.
06/16/08
Top Critic[Chaterjee's] is a face that finds a profound eloquence in silence, transmitting an insistent intensity to the emotions revealed
06/22/08
Gavron cleverly outlines the closed-in boundaries of Nazneen’s Brick Lane.
11/14/07
the director does not make her heroine's emotional maturation entirely believable, mainly because of the utter unredemptiveness with which Nazneen's husband is viewed until film's end.
06/19/08
Latest News for Brick Lane
January 23, 2009:
A movie whose visuals are lovely to behold and lyrically awash in sensuality and desire, but sets the lives of women back at least a few centuries. 
More...
January 19, 2009:
A movie whose visuals are lovely to behold and lyrically awash in sensuality and desire, but sets the lives of women back at least a few centuries.
More...
June 19, 2008:
Critics Consensus: Get Smart Misses by That Much, Guru Gets No Love
This week at the movies, we've got wacky spies (Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway) and silly self-help specialists (The Love Guru starring Mike Myers and... More...
June 18, 2008:
Arranged marriage at center of cross-cultural drama set in London.
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