At one point in this Nordic-Baltic homecoming film, Danielius (Darius Šilėnas) refuses an invite for beachfront karaoke, preferring to watch from behind a polythene partition. At another, a neighbour glimpses him exercising across the courtyard, through the window of the flat in an end-of-summer Lithuanian resort that Danielius is trying to sell. Having returned from Norway to settle up accounts, this prodigal son is often holding the world at arm’s length – and director Vytautas Katkus does his best to help him with this distanced technique in this quizzical and faintly existential drama.
Little tangible is disclosed. Danielius is a thirtysomething father who skipped the funeral of his own dad the year before. Preparing the flat to go on the market, he walks the dog of his neighbour, Vismante (Vismantė Ruzgaitė), hangs speculatively at beach gatherings and falls asleep in pine forests. Ice-cream is eaten at every available opportunity. He’s not alienated exactly, but somewhat out of step. As he looks for new anchorage, even the film seems to question whether Danielius has sufficient main character energy: it periodically drifts to follow another resident, Tomas (Rokas Siaurusaitis), who is caring for his grandmother over the way.
Given Katkus’s cinematography background, it’s not surprising that this smalltown ennui comes gracefully shot, with stray snippets of quirk, like the fairground diplodocus poking its head over the treetops as Danielius arrives. But with much of The Visitor’s long runtime devoted to simply surveilling this entropic purgatory and little else, it leaves it until late before openly broaching the matter of its protagonist’s diffidence. Is it because of guilt for returning too late? Or tied up with feelings about his own recent fatherhood? Or just common nostalgia about his old family life? All of the above, possibly.
With the paternal issue apparently settled by a strange request over breakfast to Vismante’s father, Katkus – steadfast in his love of the mid-shot thus far – abandons his previous reserve. Where a character being gifted a red lifeguard beach inflatable prompted a diegetic burst of the Baywatch theme tune in the first half, the second half sees the film break with realism almost entirely for another seafront musical number. If not as stridently deadpan and stylised as the likes of Aki Kaurismäki, it brings gentler, intriguing notes of absurdism and human warmth to this seaside haven.
• The Visitor is at the ICA, London, from 21 August.
