Ramin Bahrani observes two unfinished lives. By BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.

Goodbye Solo is the type of gentle US indie which doesn’t try to bury its story underneath a forced quirkiness or look-at-me tactics. Instead it’s more of a sigh, a quiet film about the passing of time and a demographic changing of the guard in the United States, where the old “white” world typified by Hank Williams is being replaced by a new multi-ethnic world of “reggae, rock n roll and all that”. The story is about a man wanting to commit suicide, and hiring a taxi driver to drive him to the suicide point. If the plot sounds similar to Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami’s A Taste of Cherry, it might not be pure ‘coincidence’ – Ramin Bahrani while American, learned film in Iran. And while he doesn’t have the same formal brilliance of Kiarostami (not that many worldwide do), he knows how to use an understated camera-work and narrative ambiguity to gain emotional resonance.

Gregarious Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané) is a taxi driver, whose Latina wife is expecting their first child (though she has a daughter too). He picks up gruff William (Red West) who asks to be taken to a mountain-top in a few days, and doesn’t ask to be picked back up. Solo realises that William is considering suicide and attempts to try and dissuade him. The clichéd characterisation is saved by the immensely likeable acting performances. West and Savané carry the film. While the film is aesthetically restrained (it feels like it could come from any city as a result), Bahrani wisely focuses on their faces too, which enhances the emotional impact.

Goodbye Solo looks at life’s little failures. William’s life has been a long accumulation of them, and he can’t take it anymore. Solo is extremely chipper, but as the film progresses, his problems start to add up as well. He just doesn’t realise. The film shows this former biker, country-listening elderly white man, ultimately isn’t that different from the young Senegalese immigrant who dreams of becoming a flight attendant. The film’s ultimate conclusion brings to mind Ozu’s Tokyo Story, another film which deals with the changing of the guard and the little things that go wrong in everyday life – and that simple, beautiful line in Ozu’s film: “isn’t life disappointing?”