Korean-American director, So Yong Kim, molds In Between Days – her feature debut that has won prizes at Berlin and Sundance earlier this year – as a predominantly visual experience that is filled with assured performances from non-professionals who seem to be caught in urgent, half-expressed emotional and sexual expressions of Adolescence. Aimie (Jiseon Kim) has recently made the move from Korea to Toronto and lives with her working mum. Lonely and not entirely assimilated into her environment just yet, she develops an innocent, unrequited crush on her somewhat aloof Korean guy-friend from school, which plays over a course of wintry days and nights.

The film consciously recalls, at least in form, neo-neo-realist works like Jia Zhang-ke's Unknown Pleasures and the Dardenne's Rosetta (but is ultimately, understandably, less ambitious than either film), yet at its frozen heart this remains as something far more gentle and fleeting. A possible adaptation of a certain song by The Cure, even. Kim is working with the bare essentials here: a skeletal narrative structure, austere cityscapes, occasional music between long silences, faces forever in extreme DV close-ups - minimalism that accentuates Aimie's alienation. Unfortunately, the film's frustrating need to define itself by juxtaposing its frequent use of close-ups and handheld camera movements with stationary shots when the camera regards still landscape (during which an offscreen Aimee reads out letters to her absent father, yearning for a reunion) proves less effective than anything else, but the film redeems itself before it ends, which is when we realise how emotionally involved we have become in Aimie's story. And, judging from the sudden ending feeling like a spell breaking, how hypnotised we are by her face.—Mubarak Ali