"Visitor" mixes human comedy with human drama while "Sarah" is a hoot

By PHILIP WUNTCH
Film Critic Emeritus

Having enjoyed and -- dare I say it? -- even adored director Thomas McCarthy's first film "The Station Agent," I approached "The Visitor" with mild trepidation. Second films have a way of disappointing both filmmaker and filmgoer.

Such hesitation proves happily unfounded. "The Visitor" may not be as immediately huggable as "The Station Agent." But ultimately it's even more provocative and memorable.

Some pundits have labeled the movie a post-9/11 political treatise regarding illegal aliens. But that's only a small fraction of the film's mosaic. It's basically a story of the reawakening of human emotion and the redemptive powers of friendship. Some of its plot twists are forecast as much as an hour before they develop, but director/screenwriter McCarthy's uncanny observation of human behavior makes them flow with natural ease.

Walter Vale, a disenchanted global economics professor played to perfection by veteran character actor Richard Jenkins, provides an initially grim centerpiece. He's the sort of prof students and even colleagues dislike. Unfailingly polite but always dismissive, the widowed Walter mentions his grown son only in passing. With no patience for any shortcomings other than his own, he seems to deserve his own loneliness.

His mundane existence undergoes a drastic change when he leaves his Connecticut campus for a brief visit to a Greenwich Village apartment he once shared with his wife. He finds it occupied by a Syrian musician named Tarek and Tarek's Senegalese girlfriend Zainab. Both are illegal aliens. Walter connects quickly yet convincingly with extroverted charmer Tarek and eventually with the more reluctant Zainab. Most importantly, he bonds with Tarek's devoted mother Mouna.

Tarek teaches Walter to play drums, which provides the emotionally dormant professor a joyous means of self-expression. But Tarek is unjustly arrested and faces deportation when his illegal status is discovered.

Jenkins is probably best-known as a patriarchal ghost in "Six Feet Under" although "Flirting With Disaster" fans will recognize him as the gay FBI agent who gets a hilarious heroin high. "The Visitor" should be his breakthrough movie. Walter being a man of few words, Jenkins exquisitely captures his body English. His facial features have the stillness appropriate for a man unaccustomed to smiling, but even his blankest stares become a mode of communication.

All the performances are superb. Hiam Abbass, fondly remembered from "The Syrian Bride," is a model of powerful understatement as the resolute, proud Mouna, and her relationship with Walter is lovely to behold. The character of warm-hearted Tarek could easily be overplayed, but Haaz Sleiman never strikes a false note, while Danai Jekesai Gurira registers each layer of Zainab's often unspoken emotions. The film is so well-cast that Marian Seldes, one of Edward Albee's favorite stage actresses, gives a sharp performance as a dour piano teacher.

"The Visitor" is a profoundly moving mixture of human comedy and human drama. And always the emphasis is on "human."

ABOUT "SARAH MARSHALL": "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is one cheery, likable movie that, for the most part, manages to be cheery and likable without insulting your intelligence.

It's a comedy of the disasters that befall Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) when he's dumped by Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), the star of a dumbed-down CSI-type television show. (William Baldwin does a hilarious cameo as her co-star.)

Since Peter is the composer of the TV show's music, every working moment reminds him of Sarah. To forget the titular character and find time to work on his long-gestating rock opera based on the Dracula legends, he heads for Hawaii. It's typical of his luck that he winds up at the same hotel where Sarah vacations with new lover, British rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand).

If that sounds like a lame premise, it is. But the screenplay, written by Segel, has an abundance of sharp dialogue and realistically constructed characters. Novice director Nicholas Stoller has a sometimes ponderous sense of pacing, but he's clearly an actor-friendly helmer who knows how to respect a solid screenplay. He draws outstanding performances from a cast familiar to couch potatoes.

"How I Met Your Mother"'s Segel plays yet another variation of that current comedy craze, the protagonist who fails to navigate the seas of romance. Although Peter occasionally resembles the characters immortalized by the young Woody Allen, Segel gives his own touch to the comic mishaps. The screenplay also calls for him to be caught literally with his pants down, familiarizing audiences with Peter's male appendage.

Mila Kunis, known from "Family Guy" and "That '70s Show," enchants both Peter and the audience as a warm hotel employee, while Bell never tries to soften Sarah's self-absorption. Brand is consistently hilarious as Sarah's new main man, whose deceptive friendliness to hapless Peter provides some clever moments. But as Peter's bossy stepbrother, "Saturday Night Live"'s Bill Hader overcompensates for having the screenplay's least developed role.

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is, more often than not, a lark and frequently a hoot.