You would never believe that this small-scale independent movie was written and directed by Steve Barron, who made the currently showing fantasy Merlin for TV and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the cinema. It is a minimalist study of Jorge (Octavia Gomez Berrios), a shy young Latin American kitchen worker in the Jamaica district of Queens, New York, which is said to be the most multicultural neighbourhood in the world, with 140 different languages spoken.

Unfortunately, Jorge doesn’t seem to speak any of them, gets bullied by a fellow worker at the diner run by Rick (Mandy Patinkin) and is encouraged by his possibly gay flatmate to do something about his obvious attraction to Amy (Eugenia Yuan), a nice Chinese waitress.

Most of human life works in or visits Rick’s diner, including a ravaged middle-aged waitress who hates the fat, quarrelsome chef and a nutty customer who almost chokes to death on the food.

All this is well shot in Jamaica itself, a dingy and depressed area which in no way simulates its Caribbean namesake, as Barron paints a sympathetic portrait of immigrants scraping a living in less than salubrious circumstances.

Gomez Berrios plays poor, silent Jorge as a man whose life seems to stretch out before him with no promise at all, while Amy proves that, even in these circumstances, it is possible to be cheerful.

It’s not a bad effort at all — and certainly a whole class above Ninja Turtles.