The Transit Lounge

Director: Sarah Gavron
Starring: Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik
Rated: M

Nazneen, a “simple” teenager from a Bangladeshi village, is married off to an educated Bengali man based in England following the suicide of her mother. Separated from her beloved sister and living in the cold, grey reality of London with her ugly, pretentious, and overbearing husband and two daughters, Nazneen endures her dreary days by escaping to a fantasy land in which her homeland and the sister she left behind are idealised and relentlessly longed for. Despite being an observant Muslim, Nazneen’s spirit is withering on the vine.

When the young and handsome Karim enters her world, Nazneen’s denial begins to unravel. As tensions brew (anti-Muslim sentiment is present and Karim is involved with a group who gather to oppose it) they begin an affair and fall in love. When the planes hit the twin towers of New York, tensions escalate and the neighbourhood becomes a hothouse for a burgeoning Islamic radicalism that claims Karim.

As Paul Byrnes noted in his Sydney Morning Herald review of Brick Lane, the filming of Monica Ali’s celebrated novel sparked controversy in London. The novel had already raised the hackles of some Bangladeshi Londoners who objected to their depiction. The ensuing ruckus saw both Germaine Greer and Salman Rushdie weigh in, but it’s difficult to see what the fuss was about. Brick Lane overflows with compassion for the beleaguered Bengali community and for each of its characters; the greatest achievement of a most accomplished and memorable film.

The performances are solid, with Tannishtha Chatterjee as Nazneen capturing the nuance of repression and melancholy skilfully and Satish Kaushik bravely inhabiting the complex character of her husband, Chanu. Special mention goes to the wonderful performance by Naeema Begum who perfectly conveys the contempt, anger and all-seeing grief of the troubled elder daughter.

My only gripe with this exceptional film is the way Nazneen resolves the messy situation with her lover and her husband. It all seemed just a bit too easy and convenient and I wasn’t clear enough about her motivations in either case. Perhaps this is one of the pitfalls of adaptations — in a novel the complexities of relationships and their trajectories can be teased out but in a film, deep, inner reasoning can be harder to portray.

In the end, Nazneen lets go of the idealisation of her childhood community and embraces the London community in which she feels she now belongs. By the time she does so, she is no longer a simple girl from the village.