Starring RICHARD JENKINS of Six Feet Under

THE VISITOR

SHOWTIMES

 

Director Tom McCarthy’s (The Station Agent) new film, The Visitor, is an illuminating and superbly crafted film about how disparate people form familial bonds which inspire an emotional rebirth in a lonely widower. Walter Vale, an economics professor from Connecticut, has withdrawn from life since his wife died. When he must attend a conference on globalization in Manhattan, he goes home to his seldom-used apartment in the city and frightens a young couple who have been living there illegally, Tarek, a Syrian man, and his lover, Zainab, from Senegal. Seeing that the couple have nowhere else to go, Walter softens and invites them to stay until they sort something out, and a friendship blossoms. One day Tarek has a chance encounter with the police and is immediately detained. Since Zainab cannot visit Tarek at the immigration detention center, she turns to Walter for help. When he decides to assume responsibility for his new friends, Walter begins a journey back toward personal and emotional revival. McCarthy’s precise direction elicits wonderfully nuanced performances from a talented cast led by Six Feet Under’s Richard Jenkins. The Visitor possesses a powerful, yet quiet, grace and establishes McCarthy as a masterful storyteller.  USA, 2007, 103 min.