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With: Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik, Christopher Simpson, Naeema Begum, Lana Rahman, Harvey Virdi, Lalita Ahmed, Zafreen
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Written by: Laura Jones, Abi Morgan, based on a novel by Monica Ali
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Directed by: Sarah Gavron
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sexuality and brief strong language
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Running Time: 101
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Date: 08/31/2007
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Brick-Headed
By Jeffrey M. Anderson SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: I have less patience for bland, safe pictures like Brick Lane than I do for flat-out bad ones. Every conceivable choice on this film was met with the most obvious answer, and every turn comes right out of other movies. It's the kind of movie that embraces clichés, mainly because it's too lazy to come up with anything relevant or too amateurish to understand that these ideas have all been thought of before. And yet, I expect that the film's pandering treatment of another culture, and the fact that it was based on a book (by Monica Ali) will cause it to be a critical hit. Tannishtha Chatterjee stars as Nazneen, a young Bangladeshi girl sent to London to marry after her mother commits suicide. After the prologue, she has been there long enough to have raised two 'tween girls and has not seen her beloved sister in all this time. Her husband is a fat, cartoonish lout, educated but unaware of life's most basic concepts. When he mentions his hoped-for "promotion" in the film's first 20 minutes, it's crushingly obvious what's going to happen. She takes in sewing and falls in love with the cloth delivery guy (Christopher Simpson), but after 9/11 (no, I'm not kidding), he morphs into a terrorist. Nazneen is totally passive, and so must spend the entire film trying to find her personality. It's unbearable. Sarah Gavron directs. AskMen.com: Brick Lane
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