Goodbye Solo

Born in North Carolina to Iranian parents, Ramin Bahrani has carved out a peculiar space for himself with stories of immigrants living on the margins of American society: in Man Push Cart (2005) a former Pakistani pop singer peddles coffee and bagels on the streets of New York City, and in Chop Shop (2007) two Puerto Rican children hustle to get by in the scrap yards and auto shops near Shea Stadium. With this moving third feature Bahrani returns to his home state but also reaches back to the old country for his story, which riffs on Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry. In Winston-Salem, a bighearted Senegalese cabbie (Souleymane Sy Savane) agrees to drive a sullen old man (Red West) to the top of a mountain on an agreed-upon date; fearing the man intends suicide, the driver gradually coaxes him into his home life with his Mexican wife (Carmen Leyva) and sweet, perspicacious stepdaughter (Diana Franco Galindo). The emotion here is genuine, but the outlook is tough: in Bahrani's movies we're all aliens to each other. By J.R. Jones