The Visitor

I loved "The Station Agent." That said, I was really glad to see that Tom McCarthy is off and running with more original, and meaningful, material. A subtle director who tells heartbreaking stories with wit and grace - go figure. He's never going to make any money in Hollywood. But he sure is going to have my attention.

The Visitor follows Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins,) an aging, insufferably dull economics professor on the verge of simply fading into nonexistence - Walter is so pointedly colorless that you feel the need to take a pulse. But Walter is unwillingly shipped off to Manhattan to present a paper he didn't write, and when he unlocks his long unused city apartment, he finds it terribly occupied by the very colorful Tarek and Zainab. The couple has been scammed into renting his apartment, and Walter, on a very un-Walter like whim, let's them stay until they can sort things out. What follows is a kind of coming of age film, where Walter grows a soul through a deepening friendship with Tarek, a passionate musician from Syria.

Tarek and Zainab are illegal aliens (you know there are some who aren't from south of the border,) and when a very predictable misunderstanding brings Tarek to the brink of deportation, Walter gets a life. Richard Jenkins is positively brilliant, taking Walter from walking corpse to a man of passion so gently that you can record the changes in nanoseconds. The supporting cast is splendid and the film is a quiet reminder that there are people all around us who may not be citizens per se, but are Americans just the same. Hope Oscar notices this sleeper.... website here.