Rarely has cinema come up with a lead character with so many social handicaps as Finbar McBride, played here by Peter Dinklage. He seems to have no emotions, he is a dwarf, and his hobbies are model railways and trainspotting. Finbar works in a model shop and when the owner dies, he inherits an abandoned railway station in the New Jersey countryside. He shuns attention, but finds himself befriended by Joe (Bobby Cannavale), a gregarious young Cuban who runs his father's fast-food van, and Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), a local artist grieving for a dead son and a dead marriage. A ragbag collection of misfits and losers, they end up sitting, talking and trainspotting together. And that's about it. But the script strikes such a fine balance between comedy and the pain of living, and the characters are so beautifully observed, never demanding sympathy or even interest, that The Station Agent proves a strangely original and seductive experience.

When his only friend dies, a man born with dwarfism moves to rural New Jersey to live a life of solitude, only to meet a chatty hot dog vendor and a woman dealing with her own personal loss.