K orean-American auteur Kogonada has until now been known for his intriguingly complex, cerebral essayistic movies, such as Columbus and After Yang , whose emotional content, though potent, isn’t immediately obvious. Now he has made the leap into a big, bold, primary-coloured romantic phantasmagoria, as if Chris Marker had remade The Umbrellas of Cherbourg for the American multiplex with two unfeasibly beautiful Hollywood stars. This is a musical without musical numbers (without its own musical numbers, anyway) and a romantic comedy mostly without comedy – an imbalance it shares with most romcoms in fact. The screenwriter is Seth Reiss, co-author of the (much chillier) drama The Menu , with Ralph Fiennes as a scary chef.

What Kogonada and Reiss are offering is a likably, if obtus

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