Brick Lane (2008)

From first-time director Sarah Gavron comes Brick Lane, an adaptation of Monica Ali's novel. It's a textbook indie soap opera, about a modern-day Bangladeshi girl torn from her beloved country and sent to London to live out an arranged marriage. Holed up in her apartment, she longs to return home. But her London life starts looking up—not because of her two daughters, to whom England is home. But because she gets a work-at-home seamstress job and, with it, a hot young man making regular visits to her apartment. Three guesses where this is going. The film jerks us around with its characters, and doesn't deal honestly with the consequences of its crises—but its greatest crime is being boring. The real story is in the relationship between the mother and her elder daughter –had that been a focus instead of an afterthought, Brick Lane might have been a winner.