Best movie of this year hands down!

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Fresh and Exciting

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

There's some good acting, the council estates near the street of the title are well-used and the natural tensions of life in the East End of London in the noughties are used sparingly. As a backdrop to a modern romance it's got perfectly good credentials. Yet I thought Sarah Gavron worked it all too hard trying to hammer out texture and depth as if on an anvil rather than in an editing suite. Mixed-focus and dreamy close-up shots are overused into which is inserted all manner of magic-realist daydreaming whose purpose is unclear. The story is affecting enough and should have been left - perhaps with the lovely, straightforward Bangladeshi flashbacks - to sell itself.Tannishtha Chatterjee is lovely as Nazneen, not overdoing self-pity at her lot and pacing her blossoming as romance beckons. Satish Kaushik is excellent as her husband, funny but capable of the wounded pride which locks Nazneen out. Christopher Simpson is a convincing, if generic lover. When the camera is employed to get all moody it captures the East End honestly and the costuming is predictably colourful. 4/10

A story simply told, often told, can be an affirmation of our shared humanity. And so it is with Brick Lane, about a Muslim immigrant woman, Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatteriee), coming to East London in the early 1980's. Her repression as a housewife is the stuff of cultural cliché and also occasionally boring as we endure her silence in the face of a narrow minded businessman husband.A beautiful but cloistered young wife may stray if her husband is loutish enough, and Nazeen's qualifies (Salish Kaushik). The rewarding part of the film comes with how the devout Nazeen deals with her sin and how the writers (Abi Morgan, Laura Jones) deliver a credible denouement. That ending is a bit of a twist but satisfactory.Cinematographer Robbie Ryan has successful color and composition, almost too beautiful for the side of London I go to when I need slice-o-life experience. Credit or blame is awarded to young helmer Sarah Gavron for the painterly shots. Kitchen sink this is not, nor does it have the gritty insights and colorful characters of a Mike Leigh film such as Secrets and Lies. But it does put you in touch with the challenges of a beautiful woman in a culture where men are all that count.In the future, more films will deal with the emergence of talented women overcoming the restrictions their cultures and religions have placed on them. If the films are as honest as Brick Lane, progress will tear down the brick wall of prejudice but not without doubts and not without a nod to the goodness tradition has offered as well. That ambivalence is at the center this subtly ambitious film.

The main female actress did a powerful job in her facial expressions. You could see the pain and anguish that she was carrying with her turn into smiles then strength. I particularly enjoyed observing the relationships between sisters of two generations: the one of the mother and her sister and the one of her two modernized daughters. The film portrays the Moslem culture as smothering the feelings/rights of women. It was interesting to see my feelings towards the husband change from unsympathetic to sympathetic. The film got poor reviews in the local newspaper, but I went ahead and saw it anyway. I'm glad that I did! The film also deals with the concept of "home" and awareness of how one defines it. The correspondence exchange between the main female character in London and her sister in Bangladesh reminded me of the correspondence exchange between sisters in "Pride and Prejudice."

Contains very mild spoilers. The characters in Brick Lane appear boxed into a confined, restricting little world (aren't we all...?). The film's main character is a housewife, Nazneen (played by Tannistha Chatterjee), who habitually recalls childhood memories of green, open spaces and rural life in Bangladesh and shares her private sadness with the viewer that her soul is denied a sense of freedom. Tensions, frustrations and puzzlement about life and where it is going has as it's main back-drop, the interior of a small East London flat.Nazneen's proud, precise, well-read husband is not immediately endearing (in what appears to be a loveless marriage), but subsequently reveals his hidden depths on two occasions in particular; one concerning his Faith (in the presence of his community), in the wake of '9/11' (2001); the other concerning a significant choice about his family's future.Nazneen's sister is never far from her thoughts and the arrival of her letters from Bangladesh have the effect of sustaining Nazneen in the belief that her sister has found love and happiness. Nazneen's only expression of real defiance directed at her husband concerns one of the letters. The correspondence between the sisters remarks on how we tend to put the reader's feelings before our own, when posting a little piece of our world overseas.The film explores how one discovers a hidden self and qualities that duty, force of habit, the day-to-day, and the expectations of others, forces us to deny and conceal - ultimately to our own personal loss, leaving our relationships with those we love the poorer for it.One character in the film is a corrupt elder in the community described as a 'userer' (loan shark!). She supplies a fascinating, malevolent contribution - until Nazneen, waking up to her own inner strengths, challenges her.The film can perhaps best be summarised by the words of Nazneen's husband who later concludes admiringly that the woman he married (who has lived in his shadow some twenty years), was not a 'girl from the village'; implying that Nazneen's simple rural roots belied her wit and savvy. Another important point that should not be lost, is that Nazneen's place (for the most part denied her), in shaping the family's destiny influences their young daughter's lives; growing up essentially in two cultures.Expect a small, compelling cast; admirably directed, scripted and acted throughout. A brave, beautiful film that handled sensitive issues with sensitivity, brought a tear to the eye...and a measure of hope.