Postcards from Venice

This no-budget, digitally shot parable from Iran-born writer-director Amir Naderi has a long fuse and a tragic payoff. On the outskirts of Las Vegas, Tracy (Nancy LaScala) works as a waitress to support her husband Eddie (Mark Greenfield), who has a gambling habit, and their 12-year-old son Mitch (Zach Thomas), in the homely trailer Tracy has ornamented with a vegetable garden. A man in a soldier's uniform drops by to offer them $150,000 for their property; he later allows that a million-dollar stash for a '60s robbery may be buried there. Tracy doesn't want to sell the place because it's home, Eddie because he figures if he digs deep and wide enough, he'll find the money. Disdaining dramatic filigree, Naderi reveals the consuming obsessiveness of addiction, as Eddie pursues the American dream of prospecting for gold in his own backyard. If you have ever shared that dream, that disease, Vegas could bore into your gut.