Movie It's a great movie, without a doubt, a strong and intelligent offering with some of the strongest and most heartfelt performances I've seen for a long time. Jennifer Connelly is stunning, and I don't just mean in looks, her acting is amazing and is picked up on the audio commentary again and again. One scene early on requires her to shed a single tear while talking quite normally on the phone, as if on queue it drops. You can hardly believe someone could give such a heart wrenchingly emotional and confused performance as this and manage to retain a normal life, watching her you believe that she is in a downward spiral of depression and self destruction. A totally believable and emotionally charged performance.

Ben Kingsley also gives a great performance, although not so outwardly recognisable in emotion, it's only really until you watch the audio commentary and listen to the praise given by the Director and author that you realise how subtle and exacting his performance is. His character is defined by strength, beliefs and pride, and Kingsley gives an excellent performance, Shakespearean in stature.

The film itself is emotionally draining, and you feel you're being taken on that roller-coaster drop along with Connelly's character, but don't for a second think that you shouldn't see it for those reasons, it's a journey that is superbly rewarding as a movie and an education in the miscommunication of people. Particularly people of different cultures.

As the movie progresses and the events step further and further down towards their tragic conclusion, the characters become more and more complex. Starting as simple, pigeon holed characters that you've seen before, they soon become more real and pull you into the movie, wrapping you up in them. They become utterly engaging and you totally disengage from life around you.

There's a strong supporting cast, although the performance from Jonathan Ahdout is not too convincing, those around them are, I think a particular mention is required to Shohreh Aghdashloo who provides an emotional balance for the coldness of Kingsley's character and an emotional mirror to the devastation of Connelly's character.

Two things are mentioned in the audio commentary that I didn't really pick up on until then, but retrospectively you realise these contribute greatly to making it a great movie. The first is the subtlety, there are many images and scenes without words that you don't truly appreciate until a second viewing, or a very careful first one. The second is the way that Kinglsey praises the Director's style of never telling the audience what did happen and is going to happen, events just occur. For instance the breaking of the marriage of Ron Eldard, where there is no explanation given, it's just happened. This has the effect of treating the audience with respect and realising that they have intelligence, and it also makes for an excellent way of keeping the pace of the movie.

Picture Presented: The picture is crisp and sharp, a superb use of lighting in the movie moving from the bright opening beginning of the story it darkens through time to the bleak and dismal closing scenes. The light is always warm and inviting, with any artificial light looking sterile, and the darker shots bleak and dismal. Some of the time lapse shots between scenes are beautiful.

Audio Presented: The audio is very good, although there is nothing to really take advantage of a surrounding speaker system, the sound is kept sparse and atmospheric, with an extremely subtle and limited soundtrack it gives everything to the movie and never distracts.

Extras Presented: What strikes you about this DVD are the beautiful animated menus, black and white shots from through the movie fill the background giving you the feeling of mystery and indeed sadness.

The Deleted Scenes are good, although alongside they have a dull and very annoying commentary. Rather than talking about the scene and giving some insights you are treated to noises of laughter, snorting and approval interspersed with over the top bouts of backslapping. Awful, before it's over you're dreading the onset of the audio commentary. The Behind the Scenes is good, but nothing new.

The Photo Gallery is very well done as it's not a gallery at all, it's a featurette that is filled with stills between interviews with people talking about actors, characters and key scenes. It's a very engaging way of creating a gallery. Another huge extra is the Shohreh Aghdashloo Audition, it's truly amazing to see this actress work through some very emotionally harrowing scenes one after the other right in front of your eyes, it gives you a superb grounding in what it really means to be an actor and auditioning. With this performance it's hardly surprising she gained the role.

Finally there is the Audio Commentary, and after the pathetic commentary on the deleted scenes I was really concerned. However the backslapping was slightly subdued for the full commentary, still very evident but much more bearable due to the amount of information that was given about the story, filming and the actors themselves. Combining Kingsley, Vadim Perelman and Andre Dubus III, you are treated to a really wide view from story conception through development, filming, acting and ultimately post production. I really enjoyed this insightful commentary, although bordering on the crawling at parts, it gave you a lot more about the movie and the story. It also provides an interesting look at the actors and their methods.

Overall The movie is superb and firmly fixes itself in the realms of classic tragedy. The acting from both leads is stunning, particularly Connelly, and the supporting cast provide strong backing. Powerful, emotional and at times quite harrowing, this is superb entertainment and a movie deserving far more recognition than it did, again particularly for Connelly.

The title of the picture conjures up a sense of mystery and intrigue, perhaps even an element of horror. In actuality, the horror here results from a domino effect of unintended consequences set in motion by a woman's failure to open her mail. It all eventually spirals out of control leaving the viewer with a difficult array of conflicting emotions.

Because Colonel Behrani (Ben Kingsley) and his family are Iranian, it would be easy to expect this film to set us up for an ethnic or racial conflict, but the odd thing is, once the film gets under way, all thoughts of discrimination seem to melt away. What you have is a very real human tragedy that develops because the parties on both sides initially hold firm to their principles that they are in the right. Being completely objective, one can understand and accept both points of view. It's when resolutions to the ownership of the house are attempted that we see errors of judgment come into play, and the structure at the center of the story becomes a house of cards.

All of the principles here are competent, but Jennifer Connelly is standout as the recovering alcoholic homeowner caught in a bureaucratic nightmare. Ben Kingsley always delivers a strength to his characterizations, and because Ron Eldard managed to annoy me so much as the deputy sheriff, I'd have to say he was doing something right. The intensity of the story once it gets going will grab you in ways you won't expect, and the finale delivers a gut punch that will stay with you long after the film is over.

Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) is an emotionally unstable and neglectful woman evicted from the house she inherited from her father when she is mistakenly charged for unpaid taxes. After the immediate auction, the house is sold in a very low price to the Iranian Colonel Behrani (Ben Kingsley),a refugee who sees the chance to give some stability to his family and make a profit in the resell of the property to raise money to send his beloved son to the university. Kathy has a relationship with the abusive officer Lester (Ron Eldard),who tries to force the family leave the place, ending his attempt in a tragic way.

The debut of the Ukrainian director and writer Vadim Perelman is an impressive and depressive magnificent movie, I dare to say a masterpiece about the intolerance and prejudice of part of the American people against immigrants, mainly of Arabian origins. The story shows in one side, a unstable ex-addicted and without background and support of her own family house keeper losing the house her father paid off for thirty years due to her own negligence, ignoring the correspondences from the City Hall; in the other side, an Iranian refugee, wealthy and powerful in the past, and presently a hard worker trying to save any cent to accomplish the American Dream, who sees the chance to give some stability to his family and makes the necessary money to send his son to the university, after marrying his daughter, being impossible not feel sorry and empathy for both characters. In the middle of them, an alienated, abusive and full of prejudice officer, capable of planting drugs to send a man to prison and abandoning his own family, trying to resolve the situation by force and certainly representing part of the American people. I felt very sad after watching this movie, but it is certainly among the best I have ever seen. Ben Kingsley and the amazingly beautiful Jennifer Connelly deserved an Oscar. I anxiously expect to see the next work of Vadim Perelman to confirm (or not) my impression. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Casa de Areia e Névoa" ("House of Sand and Fog")