Like Someone in Love (2013)
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Reviews Counted: 66
Fresh: 54 | Rotten: 12
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.3/10
Critic Reviews: 32
Fresh: 27 | Rotten: 5
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 1,265
My Rating
Movie Info
When Akiko (Rin Takanashi), a lovely Tokyo student who moonlights as a call girl, is dispatched to a new client in the suburbs, she is surprised to find the shy and elderly Takashi (81-year-old stage actor Tadashi Okuno), a committed academic constantly distracted by work-related phone calls. The lonely widower seems far more interested in playing house than having sex, however, and the young woman soon falls asleep. The next day, when the two encounter Akiko's volatile boyfriend Noriaki (Ryo
Cast
-
Rin Takanashi
Akiko -
Tadashi Okuno
Takashi -
Ryo Kase
Noriaki -
Denden
Hiroshi -
Mihoko Suzuki
Neighbor -
Kaneko Kubota
Akiko's Grandmother -
Hiroyuki Kishi
Old Student -
Reiko Mori
Nagisa -
Kouichi Ohori
Taxi Chauffeur -
Tomoaki Tatsumi
Mechanic -
Seina Kasugai
Nagisa's Friend
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All Critics (66) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (54) | Rotten (12)
Making only his second film outside of his native Iran, Kiarostami undercuts the rigid protocols of polite Japanese society with intimations of violence.
Top CriticKiarostami's apparent simplicity masks serious complexity.
Kiarostami is masterful in his layering of space, using glass walls, mirrors, and, in one instance, the aligned side windows of parked cars to suggest a world of divisions, both between people and within them.
Maybe it all serves a purpose, but a movie about empty people doesn't necessarily have to feel empty itself.
A Rorschach test of our own responses to the intimate drama unfolding before us.
The latest small, perplexing masterpiece from the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, who in recent years has chosen the path of a world director.
If you can meet Like Someone in Love on its terms, it has much to recommend it.
The problem with "Like Someone in Love" is that, while we can see the world through their eyes, we rarely access how they think or feel about it.
Kiarostami lets the moments between Akiko and Takashi unfold naturally, as these characters from different worlds find common bonds.
Iranian director Kiarostami achieves baffling but intriguing results
...an unexpected pleasure to see a quality slice of life story simply told and nicely acted.
This is a movie about love - how much we need it, how we go wrong in the way we pursue it, and how one world's ideas about it are passing while another's are taking over.
It would be difficult to overstate the success of the bulk of this picture. Throughout, we get the bravura technique that we look forward to in a Kiarostami film.
Like Someone in Love won't break your heart while you're watching it. That will happen two or three days later, while you're sitting at a stoplight or in the checkout line at the grocery store.
"Like Someone in Love" meanders with intention toward a bittersweet resolution, but then pulls the rug out from under you in a cruelly ambiguous shot.
Think of it as the cinematic equivalent of a short story, rather than a novel, that offers a brief and intriguing glimpse into the lives of its characters.
Kiarostami's "foreign tour" has proved beneficial for the Iranian filmmaker.
A decent little movie, but hardly a major one, from Iran's master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, who, self-exiled, here shoots in Tokyo with an all-Japanese cast.
Audience Reviews for Like Someone in Love
Super Reviewer
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| A Tedious BORE | 54 days ago | 0 |
Latest News on Like Someone in Love
February 14, 2013:
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This is abysmally hollow and pointless work without that much content. As always Kiarostami invites us to observe but i myself felt that there was absolutely nothing to observe. If Kiarostami feels that his dialogue free moments in a car driving around city blocks is supposed to be somekind of high-art then i strongly disagree. His way of shooting his films or to build their structure has remained same but this time the grip is much more lazier and what this film is also lacking is vision. I did not find the nighttime Tokyo that fascinating to look at that it would justify an entire lenght of a film.
So what is this film actually about? It fails to be a portrait of a young prostitute and an elder man or their brief encounter. It also does not tell that much about human behaviour or neither violence. For me this whole film felt just an hollow bore.
There is nothing wrong in a films that take more time or which has slow pace. Directors like Gus Van Sant or Andrea Arnold has made much more succesfully this kind of meditative cinema which also has actually somehting to say. I just did not find a single interesting thing from here which would make me recommend this film. For me this is was a just a huge waste of time.