Past Programs
Immigration - 2008
Paris
17/04/2008
A multi-strand portrait of Paris as cinema loves to depict it: with impossibly chic, centrally located apartments and narrow streets teeming with life and love. We meet Romain Duris, a dancer who needs a heart transplant, and the sister who cares for him (Juliette Binoche), a divorcee social worker with three young kids who's given up ever finding someone new. Then there's the warm-hearted stall owners down at the street market, an old fashioned community in the atomised metropolis, and the architect and academic brothers who are both negotiating some mid-life speed humps.
The film touches briefly on more political issues, too, with glimpses into the world of high fashion and African immigration that offer insights into French racism and the class divide. But this isn't really a political film, it's Klapisch's love letter to Paris, well made and unashamedly sentimental. Ultimately he's juggling too many balls and doesn't tie up all the strands successfully, but his love for Paris is contageous.
Brick Lane
20/03/2008
A drama about immigration. Nazneem (Tannishtha Chatterjee) goes as a young bride from the Bangladeshi village where she grew up with her sister, to marry a countryman in Britain. Her older husband, Chanu, an 'educated man', turns out to be a self-important clerk, but Nazneem bears him a son and two daughters.
Screenwriter Laura Jones and first-time director Sarah Gavron have crunched most of the events of Monica Ali's fine novel, about an immigrant Muslim woman finding her own autonomy, into a single year, taking place just before and after the events of 9/11. It's a time when Nazneem begins an affair with Karim, a young man who delivers her piecework, and then must make a choice as the Muslim community is radicalised.
The politics, and the depiction of the husband are handled very well. Chanu is pompous and self-deluding but not a figure of fun. He is played with dignity by Indian comic actor Satish Kausik. Tanishtha Chatterjee as Nazneem is fascinating to watch: she's passively beautiful, but she glows onscreen. The adaptation suffers, I think, in focusing so much on the romance between Nazneem and Karim that the depth of Nazneem's own bravery -- in taking those first small steps to autonomy, in even leaving the apartment in Brick Lane to cross the road and sit in a park -- are neglected. But the soft focus romance turns to something far more satisfying as events unfold. Recommended.
