The Vis­i­tor is the excel­lent sopho­more effort from Thomas McCarthy, writer/director of The Sta­tion Agent (2003). The dis­gust­ingly tal­ented McCarthy is also an accom­plished actor, most recently appear­ing as a cor­po­rate espi­onage agent in Tony Gilroy’s Duplic­ity and as a pla­gia­riz­ing jour­nal­ist in The Wire.

Wal­ter Vale (Richard Jenk­ins) is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Con­necti­cut Col­lege. The recent wid­ower has regressed into a will­fully lonely state, hav­ing lost his social graces and merely coast­ing in his respon­si­bil­i­ties. In one small way at least, he does seem to be try­ing to grow a lit­tle as the movie begins. He runs through a num­ber of piano instruc­tors, futilely attempt­ing to pick up the instru­ment at an age he is coun­seled to not even try. We later learn that this effort is fac­ing back­wards and grasp­ing at the past; his late wife was a con­cert pianist.

Wal­ter reluc­tantly trav­els to New York City to present a paper he nom­i­nally cowrote. He finds that his neglected vacant city apart­ment has been ille­gally sub­let by a man named Ivan (which comes across like a clue dropped for a future con­flict — who is this Ivan with a key to his place, and will he return? But the plot point is never picked back up). His unex­pected ten­ants are a young cou­ple barely mak­ing a liv­ing in New York City as artists: Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), a Syr­ian djembe player, and Zainab (Danai Jeke­sai Gurira), a Sene­galese jew­elry designer. The con­sci­en­tious Wal­ter balks at throw­ing them out and instead befriends them. Tarek begins to teach him to play the djembe, which he takes to more imme­di­ately than he ever did the piano.

My one com­plaint is that the char­ac­ter of Tarek is too sketchily drawn. He’s an implau­si­bly good and nice guy, with­out a hint of any­thing even remotely dark. Where are this very gre­gar­i­ous man’s other friends? Even the icy Zainab seems to have pals at the out­doors mar­ket where she sells her hand­made jewelry.

The trio’s brief period of hap­pi­ness is bro­ken when Tarek is detained over a mis­un­der­stand­ing that inci­den­tally reveals he and Zainab have both over­stayed their visas. As Wal­ter tries to aid his new friends, he finds him­self plunged into the black hole of ille­gal immi­gra­tion and Home­land Secu­rity. Tarek’s over­pro­tec­tive mother Mouma (Hiam Abbass) arrives, and Wal­ter becomes her ambas­sador as they shut­tle back and forth to a deten­tion cen­ter in Queens (a bor­ough the movie por­trays rather unflat­ter­ingly). If find­ing new friends and an invig­o­rat­ing cre­ative out­let had not already plunged Wal­ter back into life, a bud­ding romance with Mouma com­pletes his new slate.

The Vis­i­tor and The Sta­tion Agent both man­age to just barely skate the razor edge of sen­ti­men­tal cheese. Keep­ing the story of Walter’s emo­tional reha­bil­i­ta­tion from being too corny is the worry that Wal­ter is maybe a bit too des­per­ate to ingra­ti­ate him­self. Mouna under­stand­ably does a dou­ble­take when she learns how much he is sac­ri­fic­ing to help Tarek, even though they have all known him for only a few days. Indeed, the per­pet­u­ally ner­vous Zainab sus­pected his inten­tions from the very begin­ning — his aid would seem to be too good to be true were he not a man with a des­per­ate hole in his life. Zainab’s dis­trust is the defen­sive stance of some­one who knows she could be kicked out of her new home at any moment — xeno­pho­bia dressed up as com­bat­ing ter­ror­ism. It’s all the more affect­ing when she finally melts and opens up to Wal­ter and Mouna.

Any one of these char­ac­ters could be the tit­u­lar Vis­i­tor: Tarek, Zainab, and Mouna are, in the eyes of the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity, at worst poten­tial ter­ror­ists and at best tem­po­rary labor, no mat­ter what they may have to offer. Wal­ter has homes in Con­necti­cut and New York but doesn’t really live in either one.

Offi­cial movie site: www.thevisitorfilm.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.