House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

Fortuitously, the house he buys at auction-Kathy's house-is a coastal property bearing some resemblance to his former home on the Caspian Sea, back before his family fled Iran. Behrani has been saving and shrewdly watching the classified ads waiting for a chance to snap up a foreclosure at a cut rate price, make modest renovations, and then resell the property at peak market value in order to acquire a six-figure nest-egg to fund his son's education and improve his family's future prospects in the US.

Behrani is the story's tragic hero in the classical sense. Enter Colonel Behrani, a regal man of aristocratic bearing whose ruthless determination to maintain the standard of living his family has always been accustomed to is simultaneously honorable and pathetic. Kathy has become a victim of a bureaucratic snafu-she has been erroneously charged with delinquency on taxes for a non-existent business-but due to her textbook depressive refusal to open and answer her mail, she wakes up one morning to find that the county has evicted her and put her property up for auction. The house belongs to Kathy, who inherited it (along with her older brother, who lives elsewhere) from her deceased father. The two characters are drawn together, appropriately enough, by the house of the title, a small but elegant coastal property in fictional Pacific County, California (the novel sets the house in Malibu). As in the novel, the story is filtered through alternating perspectives, the foremost of which are Behrani (Ben Kingsley), a Persian ex-pat and a former high-ranking officer under the Shah in Iran, and Kathy Lazaro (Jennifer Connelly), a severely depressed recovering alcoholic tenuously holding onto sobriety but nevertheless gradually self-destructing after the collapse of her marriage.

Perelman tweaks the story in some respects but is ultimately faithful to the novel's style and sensibility. 'House' was directed by newcomer Vadim Perelman, who also adapted the screenplay from the acclaimed novel by Andre Dubus III. It is a dissertation on sorrow, and while I'm glad I saw it, I can't say I had a whole lot of fun. Remind yourself of this if you choose to watch 'House of Sand and Fog.' I can state emphatically that 'House' is one of the most artfully directed and acted films of the last five years, but make no mistake: it is a tragedy, and only the hardest and most jaded of hearts will emerge from the experience undisturbed. Since antiquity, tragedy has been regarded as the highest and most important form of drama for its ability to arouse the deepest sense of pathos and empathy from its audience.

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III