June 3, 7p.m., Peace Center of Delaware County Just-Reel Free Movie Series to Show "THE VISITOR"

First Fridays, 7 p.m., at the Peace Center of Delaware County/Springfield Friends Meetinghouse, 1001 Old Sproul Road, Springfield, Delaware County, with light refreshments and after-film discussion.  Co-sponsored by the Brandywine Peace Community.  For more information or directions, www.delcopeacecenter.org, or  call 610.544.1818

JULY 3 - "THE VISITOR", 103 minutes, rated PG - 13 for some profanity, Directed by Thomas McCarthy ("The Station Agent" ) and starring Richard Jenkins and Hiam Abbass.

Skip the Independence Day blockbuster and spend an evening at the Peace Center of Delaware County with "THE VISITOR".

"THE VISITOR" is a gentle, simple drama, both poignant and compelling, that focuses on a lonely man in late middle age whose life changes when he is forced to face issues relating to identity, immigration, and cross-cultural communication in post-9/11 New York City

In the critically praised 2008 film, written and directed by Thomas McCarthy, Walter Vale (portrayed by Richard Jenkins in his "Best Actor" Oscar nominated performance)  is a widowed Connecticut College economics professor who fills his hours taking piano lessons in an effort to emulate his late wife, a classical concert pianist, and working on an always unfinished book. Asked to present a paper he has never even read to an academic conference at New York University, he reluctantly complies.  When he arrives at the apartment he maintains in Manhattan, he is startled to discover a young unmarried couple living there, having rented it from a swindler who claimed it was his.

The couple, Tarek, a Syrian djembe drummer, and Zainab, a Senegalese designer of ethnic jewelry, are both illegal immigrants. Although they have no place to go, they hastily pack and leave, but Walter follows them and persuades them to return. Over the next few days, a friendship slowly develops, with Tarek teaching  Walter to play the drum and riding on the Staten Island ferry admiring the Statue of Liberty.  En route home, Tarek is mistakenly charged with subway turnstile jumping and taken to a detention center for illegal immigrants in Queens.  Slated for deportation, Walter hires an immigration lawyer.

Tarek's mother Mouna, also in the States illegally, unexpectedly arrives from her home in Michigan when she is unable to contact her son. She accepts Walter's offer to stay in the apartment, and the two develop a friendship. Walter confesses his life is unfullfilling; he dislikes the single course he has taught for twenty years, and the book he is allegedly writing is nowhere near completion. She reveals her journalist husband died following a lengthy politically-motivated imprisonment in Syria, and she is concerned about her son's future prospects if he is deported.

In addition to Richard Jenkins, the critically acclaimed film stars Haaz Sleiman as Tarek and Hiam Abbass as Mouna.  The Visitor ia a tale of a square, middle-aged white man liberated from his uptightness by an infusion of Third World soulfulness, attached to an exposé of the cruelty of post-9/11 immigration policies

A.O. Scott of the New York Times observed, "The curious thing about "THE VISITOR" is that even as it goes more or less where you think it will, it still manages to surprise you along the way ... It is possible to imagine a version of this story ... that would be obvious and sentimental, an exercise in cultural condescension and liberal masochism..."THE VISITOR", with impressive grace and understatement, resist potential triteness and phony uplift."   Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film 3½ out of four stars and called it "a wonderful film, sad, angry, and without a comforting little happy ending".