e make space in our brains for lots of things these days: Instagram influencers and TikTok stars, series binge-watching, obsessive attention to the news cycle. Sometimes, in that endless reshuffling of attention-grabbers, we lose sight of essential pleasures that have served humankind ably for centuries. When we look at the movie landscape, in particular, almost nobody sighs and says, “I wish we had more ,” because we’ve nearly forgotten they’re even a genre.
With —adapted from the novel by Olaf Olafsson—Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur gives us the thing we didn’t know we wanted: a cross-cultural that spans decades, built around one man’s search for a . This is a movie of gentle but resonant pleasures; it slows the world down, a little, for the span of time you’re watching it. And couldn’t we all use a little of that these days? Veteran Icelandic actor Egill Ólafsson plays Kristofer, an older man who’s had what could reasonably be called a happy life: He's the owner of a seemingly successful seaside restaurant.
His wife is now deceased, and there’s every indication that theirs was a good marriage. He has a stepdaughter who calls frequently to check up on him. But he’s recognizing that his time is limited, and there’s something he’s got to do.
So he leaves his home in Iceland and travels first to London and then to Japan, in search of the woman—or at least news of the woman—who slipped out of his life many years earlier. We see episo.