Little more than an old story dressed up in contemporary trappings, but in this case they elevate the formula.
Comment
06/23/08
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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
Gavron coaxes good performances from her cast, and she captures the look and feel of council housing in East End London...
06/23/08
[Chaterjee's] is a face that finds a profound eloquence in silence, transmitting an insistent intensity to the emotions revealed
06/22/08
...an economically poignant melodrama about a young Muslim girl's fragile mindset and the journey that leads to her self-discovery...relentlessly affecting in mind and consciousness.
06/20/08
Stripped of a mediating point of view, the film is just a series of pretty pictures and awkwardly connected incidents.
06/20/08
To hint that a heroine might have any flaws whatsoever would be just a bit too modern for this picture.
06/20/08
Top CriticWell-acted and grounded in reality.
06/20/08
[A] glossy but overly efficient drama that, like Nazneen's husband, is ultimately too ineffectual to make much of a dent.
06/20/08
Top CriticFor most of the movie, we feel as trapped as she does, and the lurching narrative seems anything but novelistic.
06/20/08
In Brick Lane's London, Nazneen is confined by a series of small rooms and doorways, narrow streets and muted colors.
06/20/08
Certainly touching, even heart-rending at times, and it mostly steers clear of the didacticism and sentimentality its subject matter often invites. But it never takes the full measure of its modest heroine, and makes her world a bit too small.
06/20/08
Top CriticWhere 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.
06/20/08
Top CriticA 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 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
Brick Lane feels slight and late to the table. Still, its pretty musings about small-scale self-actualization can be seductive.
06/19/08
Feels as average as an ordinary TV movie.
06/19/08
Sarah Gavron’s tale of a young Bangladeshi woman unwillingly transplanted to London’s East End is absorbing enough, moving enough and visually attractive enough to provide a perfectly acceptable night out at the movies.
06/19/08
Direction and the work of the cast are outstanding.
06/19/08
Fewer incendiary incidents and a red pencil applied to the script might have freed the good movie that’s buried somewhere beneath layers of unearned emotional conflict.
06/18/08
The sort of female empowerment flick that could get a fatwa issued against Sarah Gavron, the intrepid director daring enough to make the picture
06/18/08
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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