![]() After she is evicted, she drives past her house in disbelief, seeing this foreigner with his family and his furniture, and one night she sleeps in her car, right outside the gate.īoth of these people desperately need this house. ![]() She hasn't had a drink in three years, but is depressed by the departure of her husband, has started smoking again, has needed this shock to blast her out of her lethargy. The brother lives in the East, sometimes lends her money, is not sure he believes she is clean and sober. The house was left to her and her brother when their father died. Yes, Massoud has memories, of the good life they led and their shore cottage in Iran. When the wealthy have a fall, the luxury car is often the last treasure to go better an expensive old car than a cheap new one. We see Massoud working on a highway construction gang, washing himself in a rest room, getting into a Mercedes, and driving to his other job, as an all-night clerk in an roadside convenience store. The director and co-writer, Vadim Perelman, doesn't lay out the plot like bricks on a wall, but allows it to reveal itself. She neglects warnings from the county, the house is put up for auction, and it is purchased by Massoud Amir Behrani ( Ben Kingsley), an Iranian immigrant who was a colonel in the Shah's air force but now works two jobs to support his family, and dreams that this house is the first step in rebuilding the lives of his wife and son. She has fallen behind on the taxes for her modest split-level home that has a view, however distant, of the California shore. Kathy Nicolo ( Jennifer Connelly), a recovering alcoholic, has been living alone since her husband walked out eight months ago. ![]() It fails to sustain a sense of tragic inevitability and that prevents it from being truly involving.The story is simply told. Bahrani are all superb, and the adaptation of the award-winning book is a thoughtful and serious, if uneven, translation of the book's language and tone. But the fairy tale becomes a nightmare.Ĭonnelly, Kingsley, Ron Eldard as the cop who evicts Kathy, and Shohreh Aghdashloo as Mrs. She wakes up the next morning in the house, swathed in silks like an Arabian nights princess. The Behrani family alternately treats Kathy as an intruder, a guest, and ultimately almost as a member of the family when they take her in at her most devastated and care for her as though she was a child. Behrani's devotion to his children parallels Kathy's loss of her father and the house he left to her when he died, as well as her own longing for a child. Both are too proud to tell their families the truth about their situations. Both must take on menial jobs and change their clothes in public bathrooms. The lives of Kathy and Behrani circle, parallel, and intersect each other. Pride, anger, loss, desperation, law, love, strength, and weakness collide to create vast tragedy in this contemplative story of a battle for a house that overlooks the water. ![]() But she cannot do that without destroying the lives of other people. Kathy must return to the house to be healed. For Kathy and Behrani the fight is not about money it is about home. He plans to sell the house at a profit to start his return to a position consistent with his education and ability. For him, buying the house will make it possible for him to quit his construction job. The buyer is an immigrant, an Iranian colonel named Behrani (Ben Kingsley), who has spent almost all of his savings to maintain a lifestyle that enabled his daughter to marry well. Because she did not respond, the county evicts her and auctions the house for a fraction of its value. She has retreated so completely that she has not read her mail, which included an erroneous notice of an overdue tax bill. Following the breakup of her marriage, Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) retreats to her house - the house her father left her and her brother in his will. ![]()
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