Haley Lu Richardson and John Cho (Elisha Christian/Superlative Films and Depth of Field)

In Michaelangelo Antononi’s celebrated ’60s trilogy, his characters’ repressed emotions seem held in check by the cold and uninviting modern architecture that surrounds them. In Columbus, the striking feature debut from Seoul-born director Kogonada, a similarly brutal architecture seem to help its characters deal with their own pent-up feelings.

Jin (John Cho) is visiting Columbus, Indiana after his father, an architecture scholar, falls ill. Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) is a recent high school grad who, despite an offer from a potential mentor, opted out of going to college in order to take care of her troubled mother (Michelle Forbes). The pair form an unlikely friendship as they share the concerns of their life crossroads, both of them conflicted about how to forge a path without their parents.

The movie’s intriguing central relationship plays against cultural expectations. As critic Kenji Fujishima points out, the son of Asian parents would be expected to stay home and take care of his parents, while the daughter of American parents would be expected to leave home. Kogonada takes his time with the film’s relationships, and as Jin and Casey struggle to reveal their emotions, the film keeps them physically hidden as well; actors are sometimes seen only in reflection, and are often dwarfed by their surroundings.

Cinematographer Elisha Christian carefully frames the film’s characters by the modernist buildings around them, finding a warmth in, say, Eero Saarinen’s Union Bank and Trust, a mid-century design whose glass walls were a radical departure from the fortress-like bank structures that were common. The compositions are razor-sharp, sometimes to a fault; the actors can seem hemmed in by all that precision.

But as the lead performances, at first reticent and hesitant, open up and grow to acknowledge and accommodate the messiness of their lives, we begin to see the structures as a place for them to find some sense of order in a world they don’t understand. Richardson is especially strong as Casey, which could have been an ordinary coming-of-age role. More mature than her years, but still vulnerable, she makes Jin (and us) appreciate her hometown’s sometimes forbidding architecture.

Columbus overcomes an initial self-consciousness, much in the way its characters develop over the course of the film. Kogonada’s restrained debut asks us to find beauty and warmth in places where we may not want to look: in modern architecture, and in ourselves.

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Columbus
Written and directed by Kogonada
With John Cho, Haley Lu Richardson, Parker Posey
Not rated; contains adult situations and nudity.
Opens today at Landmark E Street Cinema.