This could have been a great film since all the necessary elements are already there. The viewers can feel that they are in expert hands but unfortunately, director Abbas Kiarostami's need to make the viewer appreciate his genius does not work in the film's favor. Take the first scene for instance. I was very annoyed that the camera work made me feel a dissonance between what I saw & what I heard. Perhaps in his clever way, the director was trying to hint that nothing is as it seems. I don't know what his intentions were but I didn't care for his tricks.
Anyway, moving on with the story, we surmise that the young & beautiful Akiko has a possessive & jealous boyfriend & is being forced by her boss/pimp into an difficult position that she's unable to get out of. The scene with her cab circling around her waiting grandma under the statue is so beautifully done that instantly my ambiguity towards Akiko vanished & I wanted this unhappy young woman to somehow find a way out of her predicament. The client is an old & retired academic who wanted to spend some time with Akiko. It is hinted that she bears a resemblance to his own granddaughter. She's however too exhausted to eat or talk, & goes straight to sleep. The old man lets her rest & in the morning drives her to the College so that she can appear for her exam. There he meets her fiance, Noriaki, who tries to come across as a decent young man. He mistakes the old man for Akiko's grandpa. Noriaki feels that he's in love with her but the wise old man can sense that all's not well between the young lovers & says that they are both too young to marry. Noriaki is nice enough to the old man but the latter can see that Noriaki is uncouth, has no interest in education & is chauvinistic to the point that he feels that once he marries Akiko, she would have to give in to all his demands. He has a low self esteem, is irrational, desperate, delusional, & obviously not the brightest bulb in the bunch. His fiancee has been avoiding him & he has his suspicions regarding Akiko's work but is unwilling to see the facts. However, when he is faced with the truth, he reacts in a very volatile manner. The viewer along with Akiko & 'grandpa' feel frustrated that more than anything else, her unfortunate liaison with this seemingly harmless but actually deranged & aggressive man may doom her life forever.
