Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a Bohemian artist, now lives an ordered life as a shoe shiner in Le Havre. While his wife (Kati Outinen) becomes seriously ill and needs to go to the hospital, Marx meets Idrissa, an the adolescent from Africa who stowed away in a shipping container and is now being sought by the police (Jean-Pierre Darroussin is excellent as the unfriendly detective). Aided by all his friends in the neighborhood, the old man decides to help Idrissa get to London, were his mother has found asylum.

Once again, Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki looks at the lives of the little people. In his clear style, he shows them in all their dignity, inhabiting a world not caught up by fierce consumerism. There is in fact no trace of modernism in this film that is reminiscent of Marcel Carné, where time seems to have stood still in the 1950s – except for its plotline, in which the plight of illegal immigrants, not an issue at that time, reveals itself to be unforgiving. The no longer young French rocker Little Bob seems to be just one more wonderful anachronism in this movie, which pleads for a return to more humane times.