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The Visitor
A challenging and likable film about a middle-aged professor rediscovering his youth
Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) occupies a half-hearted existence: a professor of economics at Connecticut University; a penchant for red wine; a distant relationship with his wife; life chugging by in a procession of recycled lectures and piano lessons.
It's a trip to New York that shakes him from his slumber. On a rare excursion to an apartment he keeps there, he discovers that it has been sneakily sub-let to a Syrian drummer named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira).
At first startled, he soon decides to let them stay, befriending the pair, taking up drumming, feeling the old vitality coursing through his veins once more. But when Tarek is hauled off by the police for being an illegal immigrant, and his mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass) arrives to help him, Walter's life shifts yet again.
The Visitor could be one of those terribly smooth, sugary films - cinematic blancmange for liberals - but, while there are some flaws here, director Tom McCarthy (who previously gave us The Station Agent) has in fact created a movie that is challenging, surprising and extremely likeable. ·
