Widowed, disaffected, self-absorbed professors are apparently all the rage. Last week, Dennis Quaid played the part in Smart People. This week, it’s character actor Richard Jenkins as economics prof Walter Vale in The Visitor. Quaid’s prof had life lessons to learn from slackers; Vale’s teachers are a little more worthy.

The Visitor opens with Walter trying to recapture something of his passion. The older woman who comes to his house to teach him how to play piano has no idea that the instrument—and musical talent—was not his, but his late wife’s. When Walter tells her he will no longer require her services, she’s more interested in his piano than she is in him.

Walter carries a light teaching load to allow him to ostensibly spend time working on a book he cares nothing about. He coauthors his grad students’ papers just so he can keep up the pretense of “working.” When he gets sent to New York City to present one of those papers at a conference, his life gets shaken up.

Through an odd set of circumstances, Walter finds himself thrown in with a pair of illegal immigrants—and he invites them to stay with him in the apartment he and his wife used to keep in the city. Tarek is from Syria; Zainab, his girlfriend, is from Senegal. Both live in fear of deportation. They act suspiciously enough that you might think they were part of a terrorist cell. It’s a tension that works well for the movie.

But Tarek’s got other things on his mind; and after his conference is over, Walter gets the same thing on his mind, and in his blood: the djembe drums. Tarek plays in a jazzy combo, and after Walter hears him perform (and practice), Walter starts taking lessons. Soon the two of them are going to Central Park together to play in group jam sessions. It’s infectious, and it’s easy to see how Walter’s dry life is enriched by these “visitors.”

But then the inevitable happens, and Tarek is arrested on a trumped up charge and sent to a federal detention center. Zainab loses heart and moves out, and Tarek’s mother, also an illegal alien, comes looking for him.

From there, the narrative takes up three distinct threads and themes.

The first is the plight of the detainee. Tarek goes from dumbstruck, to disenfranchised, to furious. When Walter visits Tarek, offering sincere empathy, Tarek is initially receptive; but after a time, the sentiment wears thin. “How do you know?” Tarek demands. “You’re out there.” His mother, Mouna, explains Tarek’s sense of betrayal: “After a time, you forget. You think that you really belong.” The tragedy, of course, is that Tarek, Zainab, and Mouna all desperately want to belong; they enjoy their life in America, and they work hard to make a living. They contribute in special and charming ways.

And that touches on the second theme: how those charms enchant the entitled and numbed Walter. It’s his apartment; it’s his city; it’s his country. But it has all become a shell as empty as Walter himself. It’s a rote, meaningless existence he leads—if everything in his life had remained unchanged from when we first met him, he’d pass so gently into that good night that no one would ever even know that he was gone. Yet into his life come these interlopers, these squatters who have no rights—just a passion for living, and a gratitude for freedom, and joy. It’s through them that Walter learns to live again—and to love.

The third thread is a subtle and mature romance that develops between Walter and Mouna. This reveals superb casting and acting as Walter and Mouna slowly warm to each other. Jenkins portrays a quiet power awakening, while Hiam Abbasss, as Mouna, communicates an equally gentle and alluring beauty. A mature couple hasn’t been this appealing onscreen since—I don’t know—On Golden Pond? They’re just not as theatrical and lively, or as old. Their romance is also more tragic, yet beautiful.

Thomas McCarthy has written and directed a quietly worthy film that says: Guess what, Walter? It’s not your apartment any more. You don’t deserve it. You’re just taking up space. When you’ve figured out what it means to really be alive, maybe it will mean something to you. In the meantime, don’t begrudge the place to people who can truly use it.

The Visitor is rated PG-13 for “brief strong language.” Yeah. Just like Norbit. Seriously, why is this PG-13 material? Nonsense. Kids may be bored to tears by it—heck, most adults will be—but it doesn’t deserve some kind of parental warning.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Greg attended a press screening of The Visitor.