Brick Lane (based on the novel by Monica Ali) is a movie about a Bengali woman Nazneen (Tannishta Chatterjee) who spends her life dreaming of her childhood in the Bengal running through paddy fields with her sister. Nazneen is sent to the UK to marry the tyrannical (but ultimately good-hearted) Chanu (Satish Kaushik). We rejoin the story some 16 years later and the couple have two teenage daughters - a 16 years in which Nazneen has apparently been staring at the walls of her East London flat and only going out to do the shopping. She takes a sewing job to help save up for a long-planned trip home and falls in love with young and handsome Karim (Christopher Simpson) who delivers the sewing jobs. Everything is hunky dory until 9/11 when Karim turns militant against a backdrop of hightened racial tension against muslims in the East End...
The movie is beautifully shot and the acting good but the characterizations rather stereotypical - demure obedient wife, overweight tyrant husband, moody teenage daughter, hot-headed handsome militant etc. There are too many flashbacks and the plot seems to stall in the middle of the film, only to be conveniently jump started on the way to a conclusion by 9/11 and muslim extremism ("I've been away to Bradford...")
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