NYLON - March 2008 - (Page 161) BRICK LANE Good books generally don’t make good movies, but Brick Lane, adapted from Monica Ali’s splendid 2003 bestseller about a Bangladeshi girl sent to London following an arranged marriage, is the latest welcome exception to the oft-proven rule. Years after her arrival, Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) has become a dutiful wife and mother who keeps her mouth shut and her sari-wrapped head down, her emotional life confined to the yearning letters she writes to her sister back home. That is, until the hot-blooded young Karim (a smoldering Christopher Simpson, of White Teeth) comes knocking at her door. Unlike The Namesake, a more stylish but fundamentally banal film, Brick Lane upends the traditional immigrant storyline, most movingly in a few late scenes that redeem Nazneen’s buffoonish husband, Chanu (Satish Kaushik), who reveals an unexpected depth of soul after 9-11 heightens tensions in their enclave. With the help of transcendent performances— particularly that of Chatterjee, the very embodiment of her character’s torn allegiances in a glittering sari, flip-flops, and heavy wool overcoat—the film survives its heavy-handed direction (by newcomer Sarah Gavron) and bludgeoningly sentimental score to summon genuine emotion. MEGAN O’GRADY FILM STRIPS EDITED BY LUKE CRISELL REDBELT DBE Whatever your take on David Mamet, you can’t blame the guy for consistently attempting to one-up himself. Whether his stage-born staccato inspires or annoys, Mamet remains a master incapable of dullness, always discombobulating his audience with a storytelling slight-of-hand similar to the broken magicians and savvy con-men he often celebrates. His filmwork as a writer-director catalogs a progression toward a subtler, more streamlined cinematic approach. House of Games was a wonder of economy while Heist and Spartan exchanged that pennywise sensibility for a glossier sheen, keeping the story arc of a tough guy pushed to the top of his game. Redbelt continues the growth spurt as it tells the tale of a modern stoic forced to act against the tenets of his ancient tradition. Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things) is Mike Terry, a jiu-jitsu instructor who shuns the prize fighting circuit to train others in self-defense. After saving a movie star (Tim Allen) from a barroom beating, Terry is pulled into Tinseltown and falls victim to the flashy promises of its short- con denizens, ultimately choosing between his devotion to the purity of his martial art and the lucrative exhibitionism of the ring. The core of the character, and the film, is the question of force—whether to react, as a jiu-jitsu master who uses an opponent's own energy against him, or to act independent of the external, to be willful, deliberate, and alone. Ejiofor expresses much with his incandescent eyes and brooding physicality in a film where actions speak louder than profanity; Emily Mortimer captivates as a flustered attorney who Terry reaches out to train (one of the film’s intense subplots). Mamet’s five years of jiu-jitsu training inspired this exploration of a philosophy that encourages correct moral behavior in all circumstances, which has evidently influenced his everevolving style. REBECCA RODRIGUEZ MY BROTHER IS AN ONLY CHILD blindsight A teacher, who lost her sight at the age of 12, leads six students from her Lhasa school for the blind to the top of a Himalayan peak near Everest—aided in her endeavor by a mountaineering superstar who’s also the first blind man to stand atop each continent’s highest point. Those adorable, persevering kids? Their position in Tibetan society is about as vaunted as those of cat-loving young women in 1690s Salem. Their crusty, sighted guides? They’re going to cry. Everyone’s going to cry, including, most likely, you. There are plenty of triumphing spirits in the documentary Blindsight, but you can’t hold it against director Lucy Walker: Sometimes a story is just so courage-conquers-all that there’s nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the ride— or at least grimace sympathetically through it. Walker portrays the Tibetan youngsters’ straitened circumstances: There’s plenty of economic privation, but blindness—unusually common in Tibet—carries with it a serious social stigma as well. For their German teacher, Sabriye Tenberken, the journey is the destination; for the sighted, American guides, the goal is a bit less zenminded, and the film’s most riveting moment comes when the two sides—European and American, sighted and blind, everyone seriously oxygen deprived—clash. Cynics can take heart in the drama, as well as the exceptional, highaltitude footage, while considering how Walker and her crew managed to get their shots at 23,000 feet above sea level. DIANE VADINO Director Daniele Luchetti flips the slogan “the personal is political” on its head in this tale of an Italian house divided. The film follows two brothers through the tumultuous late ’60s and early ’70s as they choose separate public paths: Tightly wound Accio (Elio Germano) falls sway to Fascist propaganda, while his charismatic older brother Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) becomes a communist organizer. As is often the case with cinematic depictions of sibling rivalry, there is a woman, Francesca (Diane Fleri), who is loved by both brothers. While Accio’s dalliance with the far right represents more of a familial rebellion than any kind of true conviction, Manrico becomes fatally bound to the increasingly dangerous cause he serves. The interplay between Germano and Scamarcio is deeply affecting, and the film is far more insightful as a family drama than a political screed. It seems inevitable that My Brother will be compared with screenwriter’s Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli’s earlier, superior Best of Youth, which also traced the fortunes of two brothers with competing political stances. Luchetti’s compositions favor medium close-ups, a formal choice that echoes the film’s thematic emphasis on individual passions over collective problems. The result is that we feel deeply for his characters, even as they are led astray by seemingly cartoonish ideals that remain frustratingly unexamined. GREG ZINMAN PRICELESS If money can’t buy love, it can surely supply a rack of Helmut Lang dresses: This is just one of the takeaway points of Priceless, a Cote d’Azur-set romantic comedy starring Audrey Tautou as Irène, a professional piece of arm candy singularly adept at convincing wealthy men to buy her extravagant presents. Her efforts at designer prostitution are impeded by the appearance of lovestruck barman Jean (Gad Elmaleh), who impersonates a monied suitor long enough for Irene to slough off the last one. His ruse revealed, Jean is left to pursue her with the only means that matter: He empties his pension to feed her lobster, caviar and Champagne, and sated, she falls asleep in the hotel room he’s paid for with the last of his savings. True love! There’s an appealingly dark undercurrent to some of the goings-on here, as Irène and, eventually, Jean blithely shake money from the pockets of their rich paramours. Both the five-star locations and Irene’s gifted wardrobe—her handiest measure for evaluating success—are gorgeous. It’s difficult, though, to hope these two crazy, self-prostituting kids stay together: It’s all a bit too corrupt to function as a proper romantic comedy, and too soft-toothed to work as an indictment of anyone’s more malignant impulses. If you’ve ever wanted to move to the South of France and sleep with old men for cash, jewelry and some beautiful clothes, you’ll hardly find a more convincing argument. DIANE VADINO
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