- guardian.co.uk,
- Tuesday March 11 2008 15:22 GMT
Culture clashes are on the agenda again, but this is a subtle, sombre and emotional counterpart to the rollicking East Is East and Bend It Like Beckham. Brick Lane is London's Banglatown, the setting for Monica Ali's Booker-shortlisted novel. Not a lot happens, but the film gradually makes itself welcome, avoiding the stereotypes it seems at the start to be embracing: we have the shy, housebound wife of a fat, bumptious older husband, the rebellious offspring and the younger, more modern man whom the central figure, Nazneen (Tannistha Chatterjee) is drawn to amid the growing racial tension post-2001.
But it's to the film's credit that, to a degree, all of these archetypes are overturned. Nazneen learns to take a stand, her husband (Satish Kaushik) proves surprisingly understanding and is allowed a moment of gallantry, standing up for commonsense at a meeting of the increasingly militant local brand of Islam. The grim greyness of its characters' surrounds is contrasted with the exotic, carefree life of Nazneen's childhood, seen in flashback, before her mother drowned and she was shipped out into an arranged marriage. But letters from her sister reveal that life back home is no idyll either.
This is England, but we barely see a white face in a self-enclosed bubble of immigrant life. For the outsider, a rare insight into nearby lives, confidently brought off by Sarah Gavron, who won a Bafta, as best new director, for TV's This Little Life.
