Anyone else think that Egill Ólafsson turned slowly into Lord Olivier in this drama? He's "Kristófer" - an elderly Icelander whom, on the cusp of global lockdown, flies to London to retrace some steps from his earlier life in the 1970s. Then he (Palmi Kormákur) was a disillusioned student at the LSE who jacks it all in to go and work in a small Japanese restaurant in Soho. He's an handsome and engaging lad who soon fits into the family infrastructure of the place, willing to learn their language and how to prepare some of their speciality dishes - and also willing to befriend daughter "Miko" (Kôki). As the story develops, we see a burgeoning love story set against a backdrop of a family that hastily left their homeland after the end of the war, and that have some fairly traumatic links with the events that led, ultimately, to it's conclusion. The production knits some early seventies music into a storyline that also suggests "Kristófer" hasn't too much time left on his own clock as he uses virtually no information to see if he can track down his former love. I suppose the romantic elements to this are a little on the predictable side, but director Baltasar Kormâkur manages to elicit from both versions of the man, from the impressive young Kôki and from the emotionally conflicted father "Takahashi" (Masahiro Motoki) performances that are mischievous and celebratory at times whilst also touching and quite emotionally charged. The theme also reminds us that many innocent citizens born and as yet unborn were affected by the actions of 1945 than continued to haunt generations long afterwards. I didn't quite love the ending, but this is quite a subtle powerfully story that's worth a watch.
