This variation on Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story is held together by a moving performance by Elmar Wepper, as the civil servant seeking to fulfil his wife’s last wishes. Having been as coolly received by Tokyo-based son Maximilian Brückner as he and Hannelore Elsner were in Berlin by ungrateful children Birgit Minichmayr and Felix Eitner, Wepper cuts a truly tragi-comic figure.
But once he gets to know busker Aya Irizuki, he steps out on the road to redemption. Full of gentle humour and unforced pathos, this is a delight, with Hanno Lentz’s photography stippled with subtle metaphors that avoid cross-cultural platitude and quaint kitsch.