Like Someone in Love

A vignette of some pretty sad people whose lives intersect in awkward ways over the course of a day. There's an escort/prostitute (Rin Takanashi), who isn't able to see the grandmother who's made a special trip to Tokyo to meet her, because she's going off to meet a client old enough to be her grandfather (Tadashi Okuno). He's a widower who used to teach, and struggles to get her to do the things he planned - drink some wine, eat the food he prepared, and talk - as instead she just wants to go to sleep. Then there's her troubled boyfriend (Ryo Kase), a guy who's in love with her but senses her distance and suspects she's up to something, heightening his jealousy and clinginess. He actually meets the older man the following day and assumes he's her grandfather, resulting in a strained conversation where he gets some advice. Even the nosy neighbor (Mihiko Suzuki) tells of how her love was unrequited and she's now cooped up, caring for her disabled brother.

They're all a bit broken, each in their own way, and yet Kiarostami allows each to engage in thoughtful dialogue that shows their humanity, and that they're not simply objects of pity. It's in those moments that I liked the film the most. I have to say, though, that its quiet style lagged a bit as it played out, and the ending was rather abrupt and unresolved. The quality of the filmmaking was high, and I could really feel myself on the streets of Tokyo at night and in the heads of these people, but the story wasn't particularly compelling to me, so I was left feeling it was a near miss.

Kiarostami in Japan, what bliss and promise! I'm always interested when foreign filmmakers film in Japan, how that worldview illuminates them. Chris Marker captured the most evocative coming and going of things in Sans Soleil, on the flipside for me is Wenders who completely misses Zen in his film about Ozu, mistaking emptiness for modern lack. Coppola's is merely passable for my taste.

But Kiarostami is not merely drawn to images, his whole world conveys a Persian Zen of sorts—his Wind was the most clear, all about finding meaning in things and their cyclical drift being what they are. Certified Copy added more story, but the fact remained of his being the most essentially Buddhist filmmaker in the West since Antonioni, drawing up the same realizations about self and time.

So what does he find here, what illumination?

There are three main implications woven together, all derived from a Buddhist view; the transience of things, with people coming and going at the bar before the girl, the taxi drive with Tokyo nightlife fleeing past, circling around the grandmother but driving on without stopping; illusory self, we are not sure at first who the girl or the old man are, no fixed roles but two people in each other's company, the resemblance to the girls in the painting and photograph, the old man posing as the grandfather later in the car and her flyer that comes up, all pointing to the fluidity of self; ignorance born from desire in the fiancé with his phonecalls and later showing up on the door.

Kiarostami captures the essence of Buddhism, not interpreting themes but unearthing the visual flow from ordinary life. He films the air of anticipation, the cautious exchange. True to Japan, he films the drama with no needless suffering, as awareness, with that faint melancholy they know over there as mono no aware, which comes from a notion of time where things are not inevitable as we understand in the West when we talk about fate, nor could they be anything else than what's before the eyes.

What will be will be, says the old man who poses as the grandfather to both protect the girl and conceal his misdeed. We have this wonderful ambiguity all through the thing. There is no problem of evil see in Buddhism and Kiarostami's cinema alike. No moral blame in that the girl does what she does to go through college and ignores her grandma, or that the old man desired the company of someone like her that night or even that he lies about being the grandfather.

But when what will be is finally at hand and the old man looks confused and foolish as he faces a beating, what's the good of all the philosophizing then? But that's when Kiarostami abandons the story, probably thinking he has evoked enough and we should mull over the rest.

I consider this a real miss, a poor ending. We don't need any concrete answer of course. It's just that ending it at that point in the story, with the karmic noise but not the echo back into life, we forget all about the girl, the sweet fragile self who is not the dolled-up face in the flyer, we forget about the waiting grandmother, it's all cleaved away from the film.

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.

This is one of the very few good films I have watched in a while. This film is criticised for being simple, but Kiarostami's craft is almost flawless and very realistic. There are times when I questioned the duration of real-time in the film as he opt not to use jump cuts to show the shift in time, but except that minor glitch, this film was highly tense, deep and meaningful at so many levels.

Unlike the superficial Hollywood garbage we get to see everyday, Kiarostami's films show us real people with real problems. Probably one of the very few directors who can claim to have real class in this present era. I started watching this film after reading an interview with the director. The film did not disappoint me even a little bit. I am ashamed that I did not come across his name before.

Like Someone in Love (2012) is a Japanese movie written and directed by the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. Kiarostami brings his quiet, thoughtful style to a culture that is surely very alien to him. Japanese viewers may note cultural errors in the movie. My thought is that Kiarostami can look beyond cultural differences to universal themes.

The movie, set in Tokyo, stars Rin Takanashi as Akiko, a young provincial woman who is a call girl. (She doesn't walk the streets. She works out of a bar, whose owner arranges the sessions at people's homes.) As the movie opens Akiko is facing two immediate problems. Her jealous boyfriend is on the phone, demanding to know where she is. Akiko is a college student, and her boyfriend is aware of that. He doesn't know that she's a prostitute, but he can sense that something isn't right, and he suspects her of cheating.

Akiko's grandmother is visiting Tokyo that day, and desperately wants to see Akiko. Akiko would love to meet with her, but the bar owner is adamant--she must go out on a call to an important client. The client is Professor Takashi Watanabe, played by Tadasi Okuno. Akiko has no choice but to ignore her grandmother and visit the professor's apartment.

Prof. Watanabe is a gentle, lonely widower. He has prepared a special dinner for Akiko, and he's playing Western music. (It's Ella Fitzgerald singing "Like Someone in Love.") It's more like a seduction scene than a paid sexual encounter.

Akiko spends the night at the professor's home, and he drives her to the university the next morning. It's at that point that the film takes a different turn, because Akiko's violent boyfriend confronts her on the university steps.

All of this action takes place in the first third of the movie. In the remainder of the film, Kiarostami continues to explore this unusual and somewhat threatening love triangle. This interaction among three very different individuals provides a fascinating look into human relationships. Where these relationships will lead isn't always obvious or predictable.

I enjoyed this intelligent, thought-provoking movie. It will work well on DVD. It's worth seeking out and watching.