A quiet, moving film, ,Cottontail follows a lonely widower from Tokyo to England, where he has promised to scatter his late wife’s ashes.

Veteran Japanese actor Franky Lily has one of those great faces, and he is well cast, because we learn more from his face than we do from his dialog, which is not a lot, but each word counts. Lily plays Kenzaburo, a lonely, haunted man who seems to just be killing time.

When he sits down at the counter of his local Sushi café, he gently sets another place in the empty chair next to him. He pours a glass for the place setting, explaining to the chef that it’s his anniversary. Suddenly, he flashes back to the first time he and his wife, Akiko, had a date there. They are both young and beautiful and almost instantly in love.

The film will have other flashbacks to the late wife along his journey, each reminding him of his loss and the great love he had. His only family, an estranged son, will follow him to England and part of Cottontail will tell us whether father and son can make a connection, each one stubborn, but perhaps movable as a way of honoring their beloved wife and mother.

Cottontail refers to The Tale of Peter Rabbit, the Beatrix Potter children’s book, which Akiko loved, and her request to have her ashes scattered in the Lake District of England is borne out of that and the memory of visiting the area with her husband all those years ago.

Kenzaburo speaks very little English and finds himself lost, then really lost, then stuck in the pouring rain and lost and, well, it’s not an easy undertaking, but he refuses to give up. As I said, it’s a quiet film, but one that you follow with great interest and empathy. You might even shed a tear before it’s over.

Director writer Patrick Dickinson has a great sense of time and place-whether it’s through the crowded fish market of Tokyo, or the serene English countryside. The performances are universally wonderful and, for me, this is one of the year’s best films. I loved it all the way through.

Cottontail is now available to stream On Demand. 4 out of 4 stars.