It was hard not to approach The Station Agent with a little trepidation.
True, it had won a stack of big awards in Sundance, followed by yet more prizes on the autumn festival trail, in San Sebastian and Marrakech. American critics just loved it.
But the plot premise - three social misfits, including a train-spotting dwarf, form an unconventional friendship - sounded ingratiating and cutesy. So it should be reported at once that this is an immensely engaging comedy from which only the most cynical viewer will emerge uncharmed.
Finbar (Peter Dinklage) is thirtysomething and 4'5", a taciturn type who has burrowed deep into himself to escape the slights lobbed his way daily by the curious, stupid and impertinent.
Moreover - and some might think this more of a social handicap than his height - he is an obsessive train buff who likes nothing better than to peruse timetables, walk along railway lines or watch interminable amateur films shot through train windows by fellow spotters.
When he inherits a decrepit station in rural New Jersey, it seems the perfect hermitage where he can retreat completely from the world.
However, the longed-for solitude is not to be: on Day One, a mobile hotdog kiosk pulls up in the deserted forecourt. The holder, an unquenchably excitable Cuban (Bobby Cannavale), is determined to become Finbar's new best friend. The trio is completed by a flakey, accident-prone woman (Patricai Clarkson) whose distracted manner is rooted in a personal tragedy.
Not much happens in the film, which is all to the good. Crisply shot and edited, its essence lies in the tiny reactions, and companionable silences between people who don't feel the need to talk too much; the weakest scenes are the few when they do explicitly voice their emotions.
Tom McCarthy, the first-time writer-director, is also an established actor and wrote the roles with these performers in mind. All three shine, but it's Dinklage who dominates the movie, with his strong, jagged face and a brooding self-contained presence that makes him a brilliant comic foil to the others' eccentricities.
