Cold Fever

This Icelandic odyssey reveals Japanese star Nagase (who first came to notice in the West in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train) to be a screen actor of deceptive skill and enterprise. Here he's stoicism itself, and the core of the picture, as a Tokyo fish-company salaryman who follows the advice of his grandfather (Suzuki) and travels to Iceland to perform authentic funeral rites for his geologist parents, who died there more than a decade ago. He meets all sorts en route - including a kindly local (Halldórsson, most sympathetic) and a bickering American couple (Stevens and Taylor). But in the end, this is a quirky, touching road movie that actually goes somewhere; its culmination is a striking spiritual affirmation and personal epiphany at journey's end. A one-off that lodges in the memory.