FILMS/
BRICK LANE
New Directors
England, 2007, 101 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Fri, Apr 25 / 7:15 / Kabuki / BRIC25K
CREDITS
- dir
-
Sarah Gavron
- prod
-
Alison Owen, Christopher Collins
- scr
-
Abi Morgan, Laura Jones
- cam
-
Robbie Ryan
- editor
-
Melanie Oliver
- mus
-
Jocelyn Pook
- cast
-
Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik, Christopher Simpson, Naeema Begum, Lana Rahman, Harvey Virdi, Lalita Ahmed, Zafreen
- source
-
Sony Pictures Classics, 550 Madison Ave, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10022. EMAIL: info@spe.sony.com
A naive young Muslim woman moves from rural Bangladesh to London in this elegant adaptation of Monica Ali’s debut novel, one of Britain’s most acclaimed works of fiction in recent years. Teenage Nanzeen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) lives a simple life in her Indian village, but all that changes when she’s married to a man she’s never met and shipped off to faraway London, specifically its working-class Brick Lane neighborhood. There she begins a seemingly quiet, ever-lonely life of household tasks and wifely duties, assigned by her self-important, ineffectual husband, who himself is finding it hard to fit into British society. Dissatisfied and depressed, Nanzeen finds solace mainly in the company of Karim, a hot-headed young neighbor whose visits soon become more intense romantically and, after 9/11, politically. As their emotions heat up, though, so does the world around them, with a rising anti-Muslim backlash (and Karim’s growing radicalism) threatening to ruin any comfort that Nanzeen may finally experience. Both a multifaceted portrait of British Muslim society and a testament to the strength and empowerment of the women who live within it, Brick Lane retains much of the force of Ali’s book, aided by the crisp cinematography of Robbie Ryan (Red Road ), who films London’s flats and row houses just as lovingly as he does the lush fields and hills of Bangladesh.
Presented in association with the Center for Asian American Media. West Coast Premiere. Sponsored by Galleria Park Hotel.
