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Brick Lane, the movie version of Monica Ali's book of the same title, could be a nostalgic, gentle movie about the immigrant experience. Except it is all false.
The underlying story, the emancipation of a Bangladeshi house wife through nothing less than an affair with her young boss, is not at all believable. It is as though the writer were trying to work on an ideology (feminism? Sexual liberation?) and crammed her words to fit in too small a hole. And from there, everything else unwinds.
Perhaps the most jarring moment is when the young daughter exclaims at her father, who having lost his job and insists on returning the whole family to Bangladesh: "We fit in, you don't." Everyone wants a good ending, with East meeting West. But, just as the demure wife's affair rings utterly false, so do real cultural observers know that the daughters' fitting in is a very long stretch.
More realistic shows describe how children of Indian immigrants really have one thing on their mind - India. The Bollywood fantasy that Indians in Canada have is depicted grimly and realistically in "Bollywood Bound", where a taxi-driving father sacrifices his low salary to have his daughter travel to India to try out her luck as a movie star. Bhangra competitions are held in cities throughout the U.S. and Canada . And MyBindi.com, a website dedicated to "South Asians", offers everything from dating services to Indian-style fashion.
A whole other culture is seething underneath all the regional English accents (American, Canadian, British). And the reality is that Indians are not fitting in. Monica Ali just wrote a feel-good book, surely with her wonderfully generous market in mind - readers who want a little of the exotic (all those saris and sweetmeats) but yet can feel relieved that their Indian immigrants say they are doing just fine.