Brick Lane: Critic Reviews

Adapted from the 2003 Monica Ali novel, Brick Lane is one of those feminist cries in the dark in which the heroine, a saintly sufferer, is more admirable than interesting.

Certainly touching, even heart-rending at times, and it mostly steers clear of the didacticism and sentimentality its subject matter often invites. But it never takes the full measure of its modest heroine, and makes her world a bit too small.

Gavron's movie finds an unfashionably gentle, human optimism in the face of all this, and a sympathetic performance from Chatterjee makes it plausible.

A sensitive and occasionally poetic film, Brick Lane is an absorbing tale of personal empowerment and emotional growth.

Brick Lane is a grown-up movie. It recognizes that there are different kinds of love and that some of them don't involve happily-ever-afters.

Well-acted and grounded in reality.

Monica Ali's expansive, epic best seller about decades in the life of a sheltered wife from Bangladesh in the titular London neighborhood is transformed into a compact, delicate tale of adultery, extremism, and awakening.

Brick Lane is about characters who have depth and reality, who change and learn, who have genuine feelings. And it keeps on surprising us, right to the end.

[A] glossy but overly efficient drama that, like Nazneen's husband, is ultimately too ineffectual to make much of a dent.

Its flat, static quality belies the novel's richness.

[A] quietly observant and quite beautiful adaptation of the Monica Ali novel.

As the plot unfolds, it becomes apparent that director Sarah Gavron also finds attractive people more sympathetic, and this is Brick Lane's undoing.

Small, intimate and achingly modern, Brick Lane is a lovely study involving both one woman's awakening and the inevitability of cross-cultural pollination.

Sarah Gavron's Brick Lane, from a screenplay by Abi Morgan and Laura Jones, is based on the rapturously received 500-page first novel by Monica Ali.

Depth of character, such a distinctive quality of Ali's book, is sacrificed for simpler strokes and shallower dimensions, with an undue emphasis placed by helmer Sarah Gavron and lenser Robbie Ryan on gorgeous pictures.

To hint that a heroine might have any flaws whatsoever would be just a bit too modern for this picture.

Kaushik is remarkable as Chanu, a role that demands he be a buffoonish, yet loving man, intelligent beneath his self-aggrandizing attitudes, oversized ambitions and determined cheerfulness.

[The film] hits all the cliches of romantic literary adaptation: montage, letters read aloud in voice-over, a swelling musical score.

While the film tackles the issue of what the concept of 'home' means for expats and emigrants, it can also be seen as a coming-of-age story for a woman in her mid-30s.

Brick Lane is beautifully acted and written (by Abi Morgan and Laura Jones) so its themes are touched upon glancingly rather than with full force.

Brick Lane is lovely to look at and the performances, particularly from Chatterjee and Kaushik, are delightful.

Despite the fine performances, Brick Lane comes across as a nice soap opera when it promised much more.

A blandly earnest coming-of-age story.