Brick Lane

This week's film is Brick Lane which is based on a novel by Monica Ali.
After the suicide of her month, Nazneen, a young seventeen-year-old Bangladeshi girl, is sent to England for an arranged marriage to Chanu, a supposedly ‘educated man’. The film then picks up sixteen years later. It is now 2001 and we find Nazneen living in a council flat on Brick Lane. Her existence appears to be miserable, her 'educated' husband is nothing of the sort and means nothing to her, her only joy her children, her only escape is writing to her sister back home.

Her first step on the road to escape from this life is when she starts a job sewing clothes from her flat. This brings her into contact with the westernised Karim, at which point married women's syndrome kicks in and she's on her back almost before she's finished sewing the seams on her first batch of jeans.

Then 9/11 happens and everything changes, Karim changes and surprisingly her husband seems to change too. Originally he appeared to be an immensely dislikeable character but he turns out to be slightly misunderstood and in the end rather likeable. He wants to take the family back to Bangladesh but Nazeen realises that it's time to deal with her life and make her own decisions. He returns alone.



The film has been criticised for ducking the issues on what is a sensitive subject. However despite trying hard not to offend anyone it has still been seen as a controversial film by the Bangladeshi community and has even been met with protests. It's difficult to comment as I have not read the book, so I don't know if the book takes a softer or a harder stance than the film but if you're making the film of the book then you can't really come to conclusions that the book doesn't.

It is though a very enjoyable film, an insight into a life with very little freedom but it's perhaps telling that it didn't provoke much debate from L and I, unlike some of the films we've seen recently.