Kingsley plays exiled Iranian Colonel Behrani who now works at menial jobs in the United States to maintain the fiction of a lifestyle he and his wife Nadi, Shohreh Aghdashloo, once enjoyed in their home country. When he spots a house for sale by the county in Northern California he swoops and picks it up for a song. It was a house that Kathy, Jennifer Connelly, had been evicted from for non-payment of a wrongly applied business tax of $500. In a haze of depression after her husband left, she had failed to open her mail to deal with the mistake.
Befriended by the cop, Ron Eldard, who oversaw the eviction Kathy tries desperately to regain her home. But Behrani is inflexible, this is his family\'s chance to get ahead, a future for his son Esmail, Jonathan Ahdout. He wants four times what he paid for the house and the county isn\'t buying.
This cautionary tale of the tragic consequences of not opening your mail deals with the significance of home. Both Behrani and Kathy, who ultimately has to resort to living in her car, are migrants. Behrani creates his former world in his new home, looking after it in a way Kathy never had. He\'s autocratic, not above a bit of wife-beating, and yet ultimately Kingsley with his performance engages us heart wrenchingly in his fate.
Connelly, despite being down and out, never looks less than glowing. Super performances surround these two, Ron Eldard and Shohreh Aghdashloo are just stunning. If sometimes in the course of the film you wonder just what it\'s all about at a deeper level, it ultimately delivers an emotional punch and a reflection on the significance of owning your own space.
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