Richard Jenkins would have made an improbable but worthy winner of an Oscar for his performance as Walter Vale in ‘The Visitor’. He plays an economics professor going through the motions and gives a masterly portrayal of loneliness and quiet desperation.

One of the strengths of this film is that it leaves details to the viewers imagination and doesn’t feel the need to over explain. In the movies’ opening scenes, the dismissal of a piano teacher and the refusal to accept a late assignment from a student illustrate with admirable economy the coldness of Walter and the dullness of his working life.  Walter is a widower and his wife was a classical pianist – it remains unclear whether his sleepwalking state is as the result of grief for her passing or if his life and personality was on a downward spiral even before she died.

His narrow, uneventful existence is derailed when he discovers two illegal immigrants living in an apartment which he owns but rarely uses. This couple have been paying rent to a third party in good faith, unaware that the contract was a scam. Acting out of character, Walter takes pity on them and allows them to stay; ostensibly just until they find somewhere else to live. The woman, an African Muslim is distrustful, but the man, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) – a Syrian – accepts the offer with gratitude. Charming and charismatic, Tarek is everything Walter is not and despite the age difference it is not hard to understand why Walter should find him so fascinating.

This man plays African drums in a local Jazz band and opens Walter to a world that offers freedom and vitality; qualities markedly absent from his life. Tarek teaches Walter to play the drums and there’s marvellous scene when, still dressed in his business suit, he joins a group playing in a park, Tarek’s insistence that to play well requires instinct rather than intellect is crucial to understanding how the act of playing could awaken Walter’s dying soul.

When Tarek is arrested and taken into detention awaiting deportation, Walter does everything in his power to secure his release. He meets and is equally charmed by Tarek’s mother.

The movie is warm and free of glib sentimentalism – some have criticised its lack of political muscle but this is to misread the purpose of the film.

Although the movies’ backdrop exposes the Kafkaesque bureaucracy that illegal aliens face, the chief focus is on a man whose empty existence is briefly enriched by chance encounter with good people who are not American.

Now I’d like to see writer-director Thomas McCarthy’s previous film from 2003 – The Station Agent which I confess I’d not previously heard of.