Review: The Visitor

The Visitor ***1/2

Nonna's Rating: $$$

Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

The Visitor has been playing in Evanston for the past two months. I thought it would never come to the Western Burbs, but this week it finally did. It was worth the wait.

The film tells the story of a Connecticut college professor of Economics who clearly is just going through the motions. His syllabi never change from class to class; his sparsely attended lectures are dreary and tired; his latest collaborative paper was actually researched and written by a younger colleague seeking tenure. He attends an academic conference in New York where he has an apartment. He enters his apartment and discovers that a young couple, illegal immigrants, are living there. The man is from Syria; the woman is from Senegal. They rented the apartment in good faith and are more than willing to leave when they discover they have been scammed.

Walter watches them as they leave, walking the street with their baggage. And there the story really begins. He decides to allow them to stay in his apartment. I don't want to reveal anything else about the plot; suffice it to say that there is no pat happy ending. The professor, however, played by Richard Jenkins (the father on Six Feet Under), is transformed, renewed, and revitalized by the end of the film. The change that occurs opens him to the world and to the other human beings who populate it.

The film does an excellent job portraying the plight of hardworking illegal aliens, desperate to stay in this country, but it is Jenkins' performance that makes the film worth watching. His acting is subtle and nuanced. We understand a great deal about him, his life, and his relationship with his deceased wife, but little of this understanding comes to us through dialogue.

Nonna's Ratings:
$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$ = Worth paying the Matinee price
$ = Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it