As the two settle into a gently abrasive relationship, “In My Room” adamantly refuses to swerve into romance or clearly establish the couple’s feelings. Instead, Köhler cleverly illuminates the disjunct ion between them. As Kirsi weeps quietly over a laptop playing Clint Eastwood’s soggy 1995 opus, “The Bridges of Madison County,” we see that for her, some emotions must be recalled and replayed, or the ability to express them be lost forever. But when we watch Armin dancing ecstatically in a van’s headlamps, it’s clear that nothing in his memory can match the happiness of the here-and-now.

“I love this world,” he tells her, as Jochen Dehn and Silke Fischer ’s richly melancholic production design shows rusting vehicles and modernity itself gradually returning to nature. Abetted by Patrick Orth ’s careful, almost obsessively calm camerawork, Köhler has concocted an uncommonly subtle and deliberately ambiguous work, one that’s delicately rewarding, if you meet it halfway. By withholding any explanation for the mass disappearance, he forces us to grapple with far weightier issues. After all, when everyone but you is gone, does it really matter why?

In My Room

Not rated. In German and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes.