-By Lewis Beale

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Essentially a chamber piece about two wildly different individuals—one African and upbeat, the other Southern and depressed—writer-director Ramin Bahrani’s Goodbye Solo is not only a solid character study, but an intriguing look at an increasingly multi-cultural America.
Set in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the film begins when Senegalese cab driver Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané, incredibly charismatic) picks up gruff senior citizen William (familiar character actor Red West), who offers him a special type of job: In two weeks’ time William wants Solo to drive him to Blowing Rock, a western Carolina peak where the wind blows upward. Sensing that the obviously depressed old timer probably wants to kill himself, Solo decides to wriggle his way into William’s life by becoming his personal driver, introducing him to his Hispanic girlfriend and her daughter, and telling him of his dream of becoming a flight attendant.

He’s only partially successful. William is a real hard case who seems to spend most of his time brooding or smoking, and rarely comes out of his shell. He never reveals what’s made him suicidal, although Solo has an inkling it might have something to do with the ticket seller at the local movie house, who might be William’s grandson.

Buoyed by two terrific performances, Goodbye Solo is more about the voyage than the destination. Plot is less important than character interaction, and the contrast between these two men is both fascinating and maddening, but altogether real. Savané, a newcomer who just bursts off the screen, is sensational as the irrepressible Solo, a man determined to make a success of life and love, no matter what. And West, a former member of Elvis’ famous Memphis Mafia, takes a harsh character full of mystery and makes him utterly sympathetic.

Goodbye Solo works on one other level: Its Iranian-American director has made a film about a Senegalese in love with a Hispanic woman, who forms a bond with a good-old-boy white Southerner in a funky tobacco town. Multi-culti and multi-racial, it is a true reflection of America as it enters the Obama years.