Film fatale

She had to do much the same three years ago in order to play the female lead in Oscar-winning German director Florian Gallenberger’s cross-generational love saga, Shadows of Time. Tannishtha has also been part of an Indo-French co-production, Hava Aaney De, directed by Paris-based Partho Sengupta.

She isn’t a star back home though. But if her latest film, made on a five- million pound sterling (approximately Rs 35 crore) budget, heads in the intended direction, it could turn her into one. After its world premiere at the 32nd Toronto International Film Festival, Brick Lane, BAFTA-winning Sarah Gavron’s feature debut, will also receive the singular honour of a Royal Command Film Performance on October 29.

Tannishtha, who now lives in Mumbai, is understandably thrilled. “It’s the first ever South Asian-themed film to be chosen for a Royal Command Performance. What’s even more exciting is that it’s got the nod ahead of a big-budget film like The Golden Compass, starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Eva Green,” she says.

The annual screening of a film handpicked for the royal family dates back many decades and the slot usually goes to a big, flashy, star-studded production. The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh or the Prince of Wales attends the Royal Command Film Performance and receipts from ticket sales go to the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund.

Last year’s ‘royal’ film was the latest James Bond flick Casino Royale, joining a long list of features that includes titles like West Side Story, Anne of a Thousand Days, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Kramer v Kramer, Chariots of Fire, A Passage to India and Titanic.

Brick Lane has meanwhile been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for North America. A Channel Four-UK Film Council co-production, the film is also backed by Alison Owen of Ruby Films, whose credits include big-ticket releases like Elizabeth, Proof and Sylvia.

Brick Lane has Tannishtha essaying the role of Nazneen Ahmed, a rustic Bangladeshi teenager who arrives in London after marriage to a much older immigrant. Bollywood actor-director Satish Kaushik plays the tradition-bound husband, Chanu Ahmed.

The cast of the film also features Christopher Simpson, a non-Asian London actor who often plays men from the subcontinent in films and television. He is cast as Karim, the young Muslim radical with whom Nazneen has an affair. Simpson’s acting credits include the Farrukh Dhondy-scripted Exitz and the Michael Winterbottom-directed Code 46. “He is quite remarkable,” says Tannishtha. “He spoke the Sylheti dialect better than anyone else in the cast.”

She’s also mighty impressed with the way comic actor Satish Kaushik, himself an NSD alumnus, got into the skin of Chanu. “He

has never moved further away from his established screen image and his fans will get to see a completely new Satish Kaushik here,” says Tannishtha.

“It really helps when you work with such fine co-actors,” she says. “Our characters evolved through constant discussion all the way through the two-month shoot and the workshop that preceded it. When you have committed actors around you, you are forced to raise your own bar.”

In the novel, Nazneen ages from 17 to the mid-30s. The film, however, opens when Nazneen is already 34 and a mother of two growing daughters, and her story, says Tannishtha, “is narrated through a series of letters.” Ali’s novel is set in 1980s London, but the film adaptation incorporates political issues of contemporary relevance. “It sets the human drama against the backdrop of a post-9/11 world,” she adds.

The production of the film wasn’t a smooth ride, stalked as it was by controversy. It was shot last year under the working title of Seven Seas. The unit had to masquerade as a music video crew to film a few exterior scenes. The film faced street blockades by locals of Sylheti origin, forcing the unit to move away from Brick Lane in east London’s Shoreditch area.

Sylhetis, who constitute almost 95 per cent of UK’s Bangladeshi population, argued that Ali’s book reinforced stereotypes of the community being “closed-minded”. The same angry voices are now being raised against the decision to premiere Brick Lane in Toronto, a city that has a sizeable Bangladeshi population.

“The ruckus over the film is ironic because there’s nothing in it that could be construed as objectionable,” argues Tannishtha. The Bangladeshi community’s fears, she suggests, probably stem from the fact that not only does Nazneen commit adultery, she also eventually breaks free from the two men in her life.

Tannishtha hopes the reservations will be dispelled once Brick Lane, a rare international film that turns the spotlight on Bangladeshi expatriates, is formally unveiled and the world sees that the intentions of the makers are strictly above board. Let’s wait and watch!