Like Someone in Love

In Tokyo, a young prostitute (Rin Takanashi) develops an unexpected connection with a widower (Tadashi Okuno) over a period of two days.

At this point in his career, Abbas Kiarostami had been directing films for forty years, so he is no amateur. But it might be a bit of a new beginning, filming in Tokyo with an all-Japanese cast. In fact, had one not known better, they might assume the director was Japanese. What do these two worldviews create when blended?

Professor Nico Baumbach makes much of this cultural difference (and rightfully so), saying Kiarostami's foreign immersion "heightens in a new way the sense of the filmmaker as spectator", but is then quick to point out that despite this, we are not alienated from our subjects. The experience of distance "becomes the condition for an emotional connection that otherwise would not have been possible."

The film is also, in short, beautifully shot, with glorious cinematography. This is the sort of film, with its style and charismatic lead actress that one could watch for hours regardless of plot or substance. Critic David Denby says it more eloquently when he writes, "The cinematography is clear and hard-focused, and the editing produces long, flowing passages. This exquisitely made, elusive film has a lulling rhythm and a melancholy charm."

The great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami made "Like Someone In Love" in Japan but it could have been set anywhere for this is a film that knows no boundaries or borders. As you would expect from Kiarostami it's brilliantly written and directed and beautifully played, particularly by Tadashi Okuno as an old professor whose loneliness draws him to a young student supplementing her income by working as an escort. He's not looking for sex, just conversation and company and when, the next day, they run into her jealous boyfriend the old man allows himself to be mistaken for her grandfather ... and then the boy finds out the truth.

It's a film of mostly small dramas and when violence finally erupts Kiarostami keeps it off screen. For the most part these people simply talk, about their problems, their relationships and life itself and Kiarostami films sequences in 'real time' and with a fixed camera just as he does in his Iranian films. I found it mesmerizing, at times funny, sometimes moving and in the end, really rather shocking. It makes for essential viewing.

This Movie reminds me a lot of "4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days", in its minimalist approach to story telling. It almost isn't a story in the conventional sense; there isn't a clear build up to some resolve, it's more like just a snapshot of someone at a particularly desperate point in their lives with a quiet but rather brutal pathos.

It also reminded me a bit of Anomalisa with its two slightly lost characters finding each other for comfort though here it's more about emotional support.

Cool and leisurely, a lot of it feels just like chat because that's what people are like. I watched this over about four sittings over a period of a few months because it is a movie that really demands that you slow your pace to match its own, but over all I admire the uncompromising, unpretentious tone where there are no easy solutions offered, just the blunt jab of reality delivered without aggression.

I watched this movie on silver screen twice up to now and I'm sure I can check it out ten more times and still enjoy it. It's definitely a minimal piece of art but it's as deep as life. It looks simple but it doesn't mean you can't elaborate. Kiarostami highlights lifelike stories. Stories which belong to us, ordinary people! Aren't they important? And Kiarostami doesn't conceal this fact that he likes Haiku and Japanese culture but he doesn't have any idea how this feelings came up to him. He started writing poems that resembled Haiku when he was just 20! The serene, nonchalant, and often profoundly philosophical language of haiku allows the poet to swiftly touch on the core of the universal human condition: love, despair, humor, death; as his movies do and now Kiarostami made his last movie (and one of the best ones) where Haiku was blossomed: Japan. All these said, I can't ignore the innovative cinematographic techniques he used in "Like Someone in Love" that adds to the beauty of this movie. Remember the first scene in the bar with Camera fixed on a table, the girl is talking in behind while we see other people activities. We don't know what we should track. The other scenes in the car which camera plays with lights and shadows are just magnificent. I'm really amazed how delicately he sets up these all. Every detail is deliberated. Briefly, if you are bored of the stupid stories we see in the movies nowadays and instead want to know what's behind go and check this out.

"Like Someone in Love" is Abbas Kiarostami's follow-up to the mind- bending relationship drama "Certified Copy". Dissection of the title alone provides so many interesting clues and directions for the film to take in addition to what was analyzed previously. And while it does in fact address those interesting ideas (indirectly), it is as minimal as any film-going audience could possibly stand. We essentially watch an unexplained relationship unfold in almost real-time (just under 24 hours).

Akiko (Rin Takashi) is a college-aged girl up to something in the big city of Tokyo that is probably not good for her. She's having an argument with her boyfriend on the phone and she's saying no to a job that a middle-aged man is offering her. This middle-aged man is clearly her pimp and "no" means "yes, sir, I will do whatever you tell me to." So into the cab Akiko goes and we begin to worry about her safety. We spent an awful long time worrying about her safety with no idea what lies ahead for her. The cab ride was two hours long and we saw a lot of it. Akiko arrives at the apartment of an older gentleman looking for companionship. We don't really know what exactly Takashi Watanabe (Tadashi Okuno) wanted with Akiko, and then in the morning he drives her back to Tokyo. Another long car ride.

Visually the car rides were impeccably shot. The scenery was reflected in the windshield and we could still see the characters' faces behind. Unfortunately we don't really know what's happening with these characters during these long car rides. Sometimes a car ride is just a car ride.

Eventually we meet Noriaki (Ryo Kase), Akiko's offensive boyfriend. And he starts putting the relationships into perspective. A different perspective. He allows Akiko and Watanabe to act differently than they actually are, which allows us to start seeing them as they actually are. And then it ends. Well, not quite that quickly, but without giving anything away, it ends.

We're given so little on screen to examine that it can be frustrating even to the viewers that appreciate the subtle beauty in film. Two weeks after first seeing it, my mind has started to form a few opinions on what was being said but it's still a bit too little, too late.