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Friday, December 26, 2003
Clash of wills brings grief with no relief in 'House of Sand and Fog'
The film version of Andre Dubus II's "House of Sand and Fog," is, to my mind, the least successful -- certainly most excruciatingly unpleasant -- of all the entries in this year's rush of year-end, Oscar-aspiring Hollywood movies adapted from classy novels.
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Its heroine, Kathy Nicolo (Jennifer Connelly), is a young Northern California woman who, despite her super-model looks, has no steady job, a history of addictions and a husband who has recently left her because he doesn't share her desire for children.
Her one asset is a smallish bungalow inherited from her beloved father, and her life goes from bad to worse when she wakes up one morning to discover she's being evicted from it for non-payment of a business tax she doesn't really owe.
Before the mistake can be corrected, the seized property has been auctioned off (at a fraction of its value) to an emigre Iranian colonel (Ben Kingsley), who fled to America after the fall of the shah and has since been supporting his family with menial jobs.
When it turns out the colonel bought the house only for a quick turn-around investment and when an emotionally unstable deputy sheriff (Ron Eldard) with the hots for Kathy enters the equation, the stage is set for a clash of wills that will quickly segue into a spiral of doom.
As this battle unfolds, it's as straight-faced and grim as a play by Ibsen or O'Neill, and, while there's some integrity in this (there must have been great pressure to skew the story toward black comedy or a happy ending), it makes for a harrowing two-hour sit.
It's also hard to know what we're supposed to carry out of the movie. First-time writer-director Vadim Perelman is himself a Russian emigre and was attracted to the novel's theme of dispossession, but he hasn't risen to the occasion to make something particularly profound out of it.
The characters are multidimensional and the cast is hard to fault. Connelly and Kingsley are each warts-and-all believable, and both Eldard and Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo (as the colonel's self-deluded wife) are so strong they could vie for supporting acting Oscars.
But somehow these good performances never earn much of our sympathy or add up to the kind of gripping ensemble piece that might justify the film's existence as an acting vehicle. In the end, it's just a pointless downer.
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