This attractive movie by one of Germany's most unpredictable independent directors is a reworking of, or homage to, Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953), one of the greatest films about marriage and family life. In Dörrie's film, a middle-aged Bavarian couple visit their estranged son and daughter in Berlin after the wife discovers her husband is terminally ill. But it's she who suddenly dies and he who fulfils her great dream of visiting their other son in Japan, a country that has fascinated her since childhood. It's a quiet, very beautiful film about the duality of love and death, and makes expressive use of the mysterious modern Japanese dance form called butoh.