Studies in Character; Two moving new indie films start off fall with a bang.(Man Push Cart and Le Petit Lieutenant)

Byline: Dana Stevens

God bless early September, when summer blockbusters give way to smaller independent fare. This month, two films are opening that have a lot in common: they're both character studies of deeply sad, lonely people who manage to do their jobs well in the face of overwhelming odds; they're both incredibly depressing, and they're both quite good.

"Man Push Cart" is the first feature film from young Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani. It opens on what will become a familiar image: in the pitch darkness of an early Manhattan morning, Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi, a former vendor in real life) drags his pushcart to the midtown corner where he sells coffee and doughnuts to harried office workers. Ahmad is the kind who doesn't reveal his secrets easily, but it's clear from his haggard face that this is a guy with some serious back story.

A glimpse of that story comes out when he crosses paths with Mohammad (Charles Daniel Sandoval), a wealthy fellow Pakistani who remembers Ahmad's former life as a well-known singer-songwriter in Pakistan. We never quite learn what turn of fate reduced Ahmad to manning a coffee cart and selling porn bootlegs on the side, nor why he's estranged from his young son, who's being raised by relatives nearby. But as he drags that cart to its post every morning, we start to root for him in spite of a sneaking feeling that, sometime in the past, he may have screwed up pretty badly.

Two uneasy relationships let at least some light into the tunnel of Ahmad's life: Mohammad offers him extra work as a contractor and dangles the promise of a record deal, and a Spanish girl named Noemi (Leticia Dolera), who works at a newsstand, starts to hang around. But Mohammad's money upsets the balance of power in this threesome as he and Noemi begin to flirt--somehow an evening of opera at the Met is more appealing than beer and karaoke with a doughnut vendor. When an unthinkable misfortune befalls Ahmad at work, his world begins to disintegrate.

Even at 87 minutes, "Man Push Cart" feels slow, but it's a good kind of slow. Razvi is superb as the troubled hero--he conveys more in 10 seconds of stillness than many actors do in their entire careers. The movie isn't perfect; at least one subplot, involving Ahmad's former ...