Though the neighborhood is full of South Asian immigrants, the devout, deferential Nazneen – raised to submit to fate and her husband's authority – stays close to home and lives for letters from her high-spirited sister (Zafreen), who ran away from home to marry a man she loved. Nazneen's (Tannishta Chatterjee) new home is the grandly named Elgood Park Estate, a gloomy housing project in London's East End, and her new husband, Chanu Ahmed (Satish Kaushik), is a fat, pompous ass. But Nazneen's own life changes abruptly after her mother's suicide: Her widowed father arranges the 17-year-old's marriage to a much older man who lives in London. Nazneen and her sister, Hasina, are born into a tiny Muslim village community where the rhythms of life have remained unchanged for generations. Long-established routines change, though, when Chanu peevishly quits his job and Nazneen starts sewing jeans to supplement the family's income.Sarah Gavron's earnest adaptation of Monica Ali's sprawling novel about a naïve Bangladeshi girl whose arranged marriage takes her far from home is restrained and decorous to a fault. But social expectations have kept Nazneen at home she's never seen any of the London that tourists enjoy.

Her portly husband, Chanu (Satish Kaushik) is more pedant than tyrant and not uncritical of Islamic culture. Eden vanishes quickly, however, with death, marriage and a warning: 'If Allah wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men.'Ĭut to London, where the now middle-aged Nazneen has two adolescent daughters. The tale begins in the Bengali countryside, depicted impressionistically by director Sarah Gavron as a lush, hot-colored paradise. It's also where she finds herself, years later, after a fling with a younger man. Yet most of its story transpires in a single year, 2001, and within a few blocks of the East London street that provides the movie's title.īrick Lane is where Bangladesh native Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) found herself after an arranged union with an older man. A tightly compressed adaptation of Monica Ali's best-selling 2003 novel, Brick Lane travels across two continents and several decades.

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