As you all know, we in the UK tend to be a bit behind the curve on most American releases, so I didn’t get to see Tom McCarthy’s wonderful “The Visitor” in time for our mid-year review. Had I done so, it certainly would have been in contention for my ‘best of the year so far’ title. (Happily, Blake recognised it in his contribution.)

The film opens in the UK tomorrow (July 4 — an auspicious date for a film that challenges American ideals of liberty quite insistently) and, amid the summer movie crush, is getting a fair amount of publicity here, including this interesting piece in last weekend’s Guardian. Drawing comparison to such indie word-of-mouth successes as “In the Bedroom” and “Junebug,” critic Damon Wise believes that McCarthy’s gentle, wry but politically impassioned film could make a similar dent in awards season:

Normally, articles about the Oscar race appear in late November, once the studios have dusted off their A-list movies. But almost every year when the noms come in, there’s a film that leaves everyone scratching their heads because it seems to have appeared from the ether: it’s the film that came out ages ago, got some good reviews but didn’t do so well at the box office …

Today’s strangers arrive unannounced, and after the surprise appearance of In The Bedroom at the 2002 festivities, the industry now realises that there is no pattern any more: they can come from anywhere. Which, coincidentally, is, in some ways, the plot of The Visitor, a film that ticks several potential nomination boxes – it features a powerhouse central performance, it ponders on the flaws and foibles of being a so-called normal human being, it finds drama in the everyday – and it does it really rather well.

Wise acknowledges that picking indie horses in the derby is a hit-and-miss business, citing the example of McCarthy’s previous film “The Station Agent,” a warm, widely beloved crowd-pleaser that did surprisingly well in the precursor races (including a slew of SAG nominations), but was completely ignored by the Academy. It’s canny to mention this in a UK paper, too: remember that “The Station Agent” was a surprise winner of the BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay, beating “Lost in Translation,” no less. I wouldn’t be shocked to see “The Visitor,” the political agenda of which I think will play well overseas, pull off something similar.

I think, however, that “The Visitor” might stand a better chance with the Academy, despite – or even because of – its early release date. As Kris has pointed out, the film has been the critics’ darling of an otherwise lacklustre six months for adult drama, independent or otherwise. Though it shares the fundamental humanism of “The Station Agent,” it’s a less cuddly, more evaluative work, and is the better film for it. Eloquently tackling the issue of US immigration policy, it’s weighty enough to attract the politically-conscious voters who warmed to “Crash” (also a spring release, lest we forget), but not so broad or incendiary as to scare them off. This is first and foremost a feat of storytelling, one whose themes emerge from its characters, and not the other way round.

And, as you’ve read pretty much everywhere else, these are rather special characters indeed – written and performed with rare compassion, subtlety and humour. The bulk of the press (and Oscar talk), has focused on Richard Jenkins’ lead performance, and the attention is deserved: it’s an unbridled joy to see one of my favourite character actors given the space and time on screen to follow a nuanced, minutely observed character trajectory.

Better yet, he avoids seizing newfound leading-man status as an opportunity to showcase himself alone: the script features occasional passages which could lend themselves to grandstanding, but even his climactic speech in the immigration office is handled with a complete awareness of the character’s physical and emotional limitations. It is, without question, Oscar-calibre work from a widely-respected veteran; I only hope that, unlike Frank Langella’s tonally similar turn in last year’s “Starting Out in the Evening,” it’s not too delicate to escape the voters’ notice.

All the praise for Jenkins, however, has somewhat overshadowed equally stellar work by the rest of the cast, particularly actresses Dinai Gurira (in an impressive screen debut) and, in her first English-language role, Hiam Abbass, an Israeli arthouse regular whom you may recall from “Munich.” Abbass is quietly devastating as the Syrian immigrant who enters into the most tentative of romances with Jenkins’ character. Her stillness on screen, and the deliberateness with which she unpeels her character’s insecurities as a mother and as a lover, recall Shohreh Aghdashloo’s nominated work in “House of Sand and Fog.”

I understand that Overture Films is going to push Abbass for a Best Supporting Actress nomination, and I believe they would be well advised to do so; she may indeed stand a better chance of a nomination (in what is a much less crowded field) than Jenkins. (She’s certainly joined my list of names to champion for the rest of the year.) Needless to say, McCarthy’s spare, literate original screenplay is an obvious contender too.

You may think such talk far-fetched at this stage in the season, but as I’ve said about other films before, “The Visitor” is just the kind of warm, well-regarded ‘little film’ that can rise to the surface when certain prestige titles inevitably sink. See it, and should it make good with the Academy, you can always say you were there first.

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• Best Original Screenplay: beyond the obvious
• Best Actor race looking tight as always — expect surprises
• Could a preemptive DVD release bolster ‘Visitor’ star Richard Jenkins in this year’s Best Actor race?