Richard Jenkins Turns in a Subtle, Superb Performance in The Visitor

I didn't make too much of an effort to see a lot of nominees before the Oscars this year, but I did peruse Netflix and find a few films that were recognized by the Academy and were actually out on DVD already. One of the ones I added to the list was Tom McCarthy's The Visitor, for which Richard Jenkins received a Best Actor nomination.

A few years back, McCarthy directed The Station Agent, a quiet movie about a little person named Fin who moves into a train depot in the middle of nowhere after the death of his only friend. The two movies are similar in many ways. Like Fin, Professor Walter Vale (Jenkins) is recently bereaved and not very sociable. Just as gregarious hot dog vendor Joe helps bring Fin out of his shell, cheerful Syrian musician Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) is a liberating influence on Walter, despite the awkward circumstances of their meeting.

Walter spends most of his time in Connecticut, but he owns a Manhattan flat, and he's startled when he enters one day and finds two immigrants living there. One is Tarek, the other his stand-offish girlfriend, Zainab (Danai Gurira), who is from Senegal and earns money selling handmade jewelry. They claim to have rented the flat from someone Walter has never heard of and offer to vacate the premises immediately. At first, he agrees, but they're not long gone before he chases them down and invites them to come back.

So begins an unconventional friendship that deepens when Walter discovers his fondness for Tarek's African drum-playing and begins to learn how to play the large instrument himself. The first half of the film has a fairly light, buddy comedy feel to it, but it takes a more sober tone when Tarek is arrested and faces deportation, as we discover he is an illegal immigrant. While Walter tries to find a way to free his friend, he develops romantic feelings for Tarek's mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass), who comes to New York from Michigan to be near her son during his ordeal.

Clearly, McCarthy is making a political statement about illegal immigration in his movie, but mostly, it's a moving human story. Jenkins is wonderfully understated as the repressed professor whose window into another culture awakens passions he didn't know he had. Though he finds interaction with others awkward, he is polite and considerate to Tarek, Zainab and Mouna and eventually grows genuinely comfortable around them.

There's a lot of subtle humor to his mannerisms, and I found myself reminded a bit of James Cromwell's Farmer Hoggett as I watched. While it's intriguing to watch his characteristics change over the course of the movie, some of his funniest scenes are with minor players who barely share the screen with him, including brisk piano teacher Barbara (Marian Seldes) and dorky dog owner Jacob (Richard Kind).

While the romance that unfolds between him and Mouna is touching, his friendship with the emotionally open Tarek is more significant, as this is the relationship that has such a lasting effect upon his outlook on life. Though the movie does not provide a neat Hollywood ending, it does make it clear just how profound Tarek's impact has been.

Aside from one outburst near the beginning of the movie, there's very little profanity or violence in this PG-13-rated film. It deals with a complex issue, but The Visitor is primarily a story of unlikely friendships among a quartet of people who are, in one way or another, visitors.

Shall We See Shall We Dance? Yes, Indeed!

I work in a mall that is in walking distance to a dollar theater. I have often taken advantage of this fact when going to the mall with my family or friends, capping off a shopping trip with a movie. But it also came in handy the other day when I closed up my store on New Year’s Day with an hour or so to go before I could get a ride home. I just headed over to the theater and bought a ticket to whatever happened to be playing closest to my time of arrival. The movie, as it turned out, was Shall We Dance, which my parents had just seen two days before. They had liked it, so I had no qualms about going in. And though my friend at work urged me to opt for Shaun of the Dead - which didn’t start for another half an hour - I think I slept easier with this zombie-free romance bouncing around in my head.

The film stars Richard Gere, who already proved his worthiness as a soft-shoe in Chicago, as estate lawyer John Clark, a man vaguely dissatisfied with his life without quite understanding why. Each night during his ride home on the train he passes by a dance studio and sees a beautiful but forlorn-looking woman (Jennifer Lopez) through the window. Intrigued, he decides one day to stop and investigate, taking the first step in an experience that will change his life.

Upon his arrival, he learns that he will not be spending much time with Paulina, the woman he saw from the window, during the ballroom dancing lessons she signs him up for. Instead, he will be under the tutelage of Miss Mitzi (Anita Gillette), a mildly frazzled older woman with years of experience. His fellow pupils are Chic (Bobby Cannavale), a man whose grace on the dance floor is matched by his apparent homophobia, and Vern (Omar Benson Miller), a big teddy bear of a guy who hopes to impress his girlfriend with his newfound skill (and the pounds he will lose because of it). Thrown into the mix is Bobbie (Lisa Ann Walter), an abrasive wannabe diva who spends the bulk of her time at the studio practicing for a tournament she can’t enter without a dancing partner, and Link Peterson (Stanley Tucci), John’s eccentric coworker who secretly does Latin dancing by night.

While the bulk of the movie follows John’s growing love affair with the art of ballroom dancing, the subplot focuses on his wife Beverly’s (Susan Sarandon) concerns that he is engaging in an affair of a different kind. His long absences and secretive behavior, not to mention the unfortunate experience of a coworker, lead her to hire an investigator, uber-casual Devine (Richard Jenkins), to scope out the situation. With the help of his quote-spewing assistant Scottie (Nick Cannon), he uncovers the not-so-adulterous nature of her husband’s activities. But is the marital rift that has already developed reparable?

Shall We Dance is a simple love story that comes to a somewhat unexpected climax. While this movie was advertised as a Gere / Lopez collaboration, her part in the film is smaller than anticipated. In fact, Sarandon’s role is just as important. But Lopez brings suitable depth to a character who obviously has darkness in her past that she hasn’t been able to evict. While Gere is the film’s focal point, and we are treated to several shining examples of his character’s newly acquired skill, it is the supporting cast who make the film so much fun. Tucci brings delightful zaniness to Link, also letting the audience in on the pain the derision of his coworkers causes him. Jenkins makes his detective crusty but lovable, and Cannavale introduces a comical imbalance between Chic’s machismo and obvious delight in gliding across the dance floor. My favorite character, though, is easily Miller’s gentle Vern, which was reminiscent of Forest Whitaker’s turn as Nate in Phenomenon. Though he may not ever be Fred Estaire, Vern has a heart to match his girth; he’s easily the most huggable fellow in the film.

Shall We Dance was never on my must-see list, but I’m glad circumstances conspired for me to watch it. It’s a sweet film that will leave you smiling.