Walter Vale is a ghost walking. Walter Vale is a widower, a college professor who keeps trying to learn to play the piano, going through four teachers so that he can keep the memory of his concert pianist wife alive in the six rooms of his campus house.

In "The Visitor," Walter is Mr. Chips without the love of his students. A man of ingrained habits, he walks through his days, eats simple meals alone and sips wine as he listens to the wife's recordings. Then Walter's life has a second act. It opens dramatically when he is sent by the college to New York City to read a paper he co- authored, for the writer who is on maternity leave.

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Walter has an apartment in the Village he has kept for years for those back days when he and his wife took in shows and restaurants. Now he's returned for the first time since she died. But there is more in the old place than ghosts. There is the beautiful Zainab in his tub (the shimmering Danai Gurira) a stunning woman from Sengal who designs and sells her own jewelry at flea markets, and her boyfriend, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman). Tarek is from Syria and a master of African drums and the magic of his own music. We learn that Zainab and Tarek have been scammed into living here, thinking it was a sublet. It gets worse. They are illegal.

Unable to toss them into the street, and perhaps sensing the opening of a door in his life he didn't know was there, Walter allows them to stay in the spare bedroom until they can find a home.

Walter's fingers, unable to ever master the piano, discover the ancient rhythm of drums as listens to Tarek practice. Soon, he is sitting side by side with Tarek, here and in Washington Square Park, learning the beauty of African drums. Something deep in Walter, something long forgotten and buried beneath dusty books, jackets and ties and conferences, bubbles to the surface. Walter Vale, long dead, is coming alive, watered by the pure humanity of two people who grew up on an edge too sharp for Walter's urban feet.

But fate, cruel and unfair, lurks on every corner for those without green cards. Eventually, as the two new friends grow closer and bond in the urban jungle, a stupid innocent mistake on the subway brings Tarek to the attention of undercover cops. Soon he finds himself in "the system," in a cold windowless building in the Bronx where illegals are clustered together to await the fickle whims of American juris prudence, the kind reserved for "visitors" without papers.

Into this rainy day comes Tarek's mother who has been living in Detroit all these years, safely out of the laser vision of the authorities. Now, Walter who has for a long time been wearing a Band-Aid on his heart, finds himself facing another wounded human being looking for love.

Richard Jenkins (the spectral father in "Six Feet Under") is one of those great middle-aged character actors that most people can't pin a name on. Jenkins is a master of the delicate glance and movement who can shift from dark to light, comic to tragic as we watch. He is a gift.

Haaz Sleiman is the perfect choice for the drumming Tarek. He is that ideal blend of soft and edgy, sweet and dark. He will probably find himself being type cast in this new terror sensitive world. I hope not.

Danai Gurira, as his wife, is just beginning her career. One look at her in this film and her future is golden.

Hiam Abbasa as Tarek's mother is all dark sweet and aged wine. Hiam can, in one glance, a deep sob and twist of a hand, break your heart. Mostly well known in Europe and the Mideast, and featured as Anna in "The Nativity Story," she is ours now.

"The Visitor," written and directed by writer actor Thomas McCarthy who gave us the remarkable "Station Agent," is small, a well-cut diamond. It has no car chase, no flying men in capes or massive explosions. There is no blood in the streets of this West Village neighborhood, just bits of broken hearts and pieces of dreams. It is where we all live our lives, like it or not.

J.P. Devine is a former stage and screen actor.