Having dabbled with a few Hollywood titles in recent years, including 2012’s Contraband, 2013’s 2 Guns and 2015’s Everest, Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur returns home, albeit briefly, before heading off to the UK for this bittersweet romance.

It features an Icelandic man who decides to return to London, where he spent his youth, and where he fell in love.

The world is just about to go into lockdown due to the global pandemic, but Kristófer (Egill Ólafsson) has other things on his mind. He has just gotten news that he’s not in the best of health, and that maybe he should get his affairs in order.

Instead of that he decides to fly to London, where he lived over 50 years ago as a student, where the young Kristófer (Palmi Kormákur) decides to give up his studies and takes a job in a Japanese restaurant as a dishwasher. It’s there he meets the owner’s daughter Miko (Kôki), where they start a relationship despite her difficult circumstances.

Even with both his world and everyone else’s in turmoil, he wants to try to reconnect with her in London, all these years later.

This is definitely a gear change or two for the director, swapping fast-paced action flicks for something far more sentimental and intimate.

The film begins in recent times, with Covid making an impact everywhere, before including flashbacks from two different periods. The most prominent is that of the young Kristófer in London, where he decides to take a job over his studies, which he’s disillusioned with.

It’s here that he embraces Japanese culture, endearing himself to the restaurant owner, and more so to his daughter.

The second flashback period is later in life, and really doesn’t add anything to the story overall other than a few more minutes to an already long film at two hours long.

It has an unmistakable charm, even if the pacing is all rather slow, which it just about gets away with performances from both young and old Kristófer.

Kormákur is in a lovey dovey mood, exploring the emotions of a man coming to the end of his life, with what he feels is a loose end that he hopes to finally tie.

His trip is one that is both nostalgic and hopeful, with his flashbacks offering an insight into his current mental state, as well providing the impetus to ignore a global pandemic in search for an early love.

There are probably one too many flashbacks, drawing out the narrative unnecessarily, but the warmth from the performances, and the subtle romantic notions, make for a rather elegant love story that will leave you touched.