|
HOUSE
OF SAND AND FOG
5/10
USA
2003 : Vadim PERELMAN : 126 mins
Two parties
feud over the ownership of a San Francisco beach-side bungalow. Kathy
(Jennifer Connelly) is a recovering alcoholic eking out a living as a
house-cleaner. Behrani (Ben Kingsley) is an Iranian colonel who became
a US citizen after his country’s
Islamic revolution. Originally owned by Kathy’s father, the house passes
to Behrani due to a combination of her laziness some bureaucratic bungling.
Behrani moves in with his wife Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and teenage son
Esmail (Jonathan Ahdout) - having obtained the property for a song at
auction, it’s his intention to renovate the slightly dilapidated dwelling
and sell it off for a healthy profit. But Kathy refuses to accept what
she sees as an injustice, enlisting the help of a local Deputy Sheriff,
Lester (Ron Eldard). This turns out to be the latest in a long line of
mis-steps by the hapless Kathy, with disastrous consequences for all...
Like Mystic
River and 21
Grams, Perelman’s overcooked debut is part of a wave of post-9/11
downbeat dramas which explore heavyweight issues – their strenuous seriousness
bolstered by the efforts of their high-calibre cast. But all, to some
degree, are undermined by their plots’ reliance on coincidence and contrivance,
and the inability of their scriptwriters and directors to strike the right
balance between tragedy and melodrama. It’s especially disappointing to
see House of Sand and Fog go down this route in its implausible,
thriller-inflected final act – there are some intriguing subtexts here
(e.g. hardworking immigrants vs feckless, dysfunctional ‘locals’), and
the film does pay refreshingly close attention to the financial specifics
of a wrangle over what is, in movie terms, a surprisingly mundane property.
But while
Kingsley and Aghdashloo contribute solid, appealing performances, the
miscast, Oscar-hunting Connelly (nobody’s idea of an ex-alcoholic cleaning-woman)
can’t prevent Kathy from emerging as an off-puttingly unsympathetic ‘heroine,’
especially as she drifts into a romantic relationship with the hot-headed,
borderline-racist Lester. The resolution, needless to say, works out extremely
badly for all concerned – but the impression we’re left with isn’t one
of numbingly inevitable tragedy, but rather of grinding misery for its
own sake.
29th February,
2004
(seen 23rd February : UCI MetroCentre, Gateshead)
click here
for Uncertain Foundations, an essay-length review of House of
Sand and Fog
by Neil
Young
-
|
