The Visitor

The situation in Tom McCarthy's second film The Visitor is ripe with drama: Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins), an economics professor and quintessential sad man, returns to his Greenwich Village apartment when his Connecticut college pressures him to present a lecture at NYU. His apartment, however, isn't empty. Illegal immigrants have moved in: an attractive young couple, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira).

Tarek and Zainab are not squatters. They argue in French, they are well dressed, stylish. Tarek's a musician from Syria, his girlfriend Zainab an artist from Senegal. They thought they'd rented the place fair and square and when the misunderstanding is made clear, they politely pack their belongings and make their way -- to the street. Walter watches them arguing from the window and welcomes them back into his home.

The unexpected intrusion into Walter's life is anything but unwelcome. He's taken with his guests, Tarek, especially, an enormously appealing and articulate young man who treats the reserved older, white man as a friend and possible kindred spirit. The developing camaraderie between Tarek and Walter is lovely to watch. Sleiman (24, AmericanEast) oozes charisma. Any prejudice or suspicion Walter might have harbored about the Muslim couple living in his home is rendered impossible. Jenkins, a talented character actor best known for his role as a sardonic father on the series Six Feet Under, doesn't overplay his role; the transformation of the repressed professor is subtle and moving.

A scene in which Walter joins Tarek in an African drum circle in Central Park is almost thrilling; it's a unique moment that would have been impossible in Walter's life before Tarek. Perhaps it's already obvious that as the walls of Walter's rigid existence begin to come down, Tarak ends up imprisoned. The early, unexpected happiness of The Visitor can't be sustained. The plot demands crisis. The splendor of Manhattan - the fall colors dazzling in Washington Square Park - is notably absent when Walter leaves the borough en route to an immimgrant detention center in Queens, a bleak industrial landscape.

When Tarek's mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass) arrives in New York, Walter strives to take care of her, too. His pleasure in her genteel company is uncomfortable. Will the privileged professor, who still has his West Village apartment, a red Volvo station wagon, a house in the suburbs, and Tarek's African drums, find his rhythm and romance at the cost of Tarek's freedom?

The Visitor, fortunately, does not deal in easy answers or happy endings. McCarthy uses Tarek's unjust confinement, reminiscent of the nightmarish bureaucracy of Kafka's Trial, to exemplify the deliberately confusing and inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants. The film, however, is not a polemic, but a character-driven work, made all the more riveting by sensitive performances not only by Jenkins in his first leading role, but the entire cast.