Like Someone in Love (2012) Reviews

• Playing To Type: How Could The Japanese Be So Unemotional Yet Project Such Potent Feelings?

  aghaemi2014-06-18

  For many Like Someone In Love may be a boring film to watch, but others are about to be engrossed by characters, their stories, interactions and even a drive through Tokyo. Or just be fascinated by the director's style. Or love the outside of main character Akiko (played by Rin Takanashi) and her appearance and hate her dilemma and inconsiderate duplicity. Or be engulfed in utter dismal sorrow at the treatment of Akiko's grandmother (played by Kaneko Kubota), which in terms of sheer emotional sadness is second only to Tomi Hirayama's life and death in Tokyo Story. Here is a film that in turn will induce absurdity, embarrassment, squirming, love, lust, hate, loathing, discomfort and pity. Akiko is a typical Tokyo girl. She is from Fukuroi in Shizuoka. She is pretty, has a fiancé and is in the city attending university. She, however, leads a surreptitious existence. We know this soon enough because we quickly put two and two together based on her conversation with her fiancé Noriaski (played by Ryo Kase) and the persons she shares a table with, a manipulative and filthy Hiroshi (played by Denden) and Nagisa (played by Reiko Mori). Foreign directors in Japan could go one of two ways. It could be a Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola–Grade: A) or a Map Of The Sounds Of Tokyo (Isabel Coixet–Grade: C). Look for sequences in Tokyo and Yokohoma including the entrance to Daisan Keihin Road and Aoyama Book Centre. This is not Adrift In Tokyo, yet the drive at night is so commonplace and yet simultaneously so pivotal. How could one not grade this film more like the former film than the latter? As the film opens Akiko is heard but not seen. This is the first of many intrigues in a story where most things are implied and perceived and not spelt out for us. Then we see manipulation and deceit in multiple back-and-forths. The story unfolds in real-time as a peculiar drama in which patience is a necessity. Should one persevere the film literally makes an art form of making the viewer guess what is going on now and what will come next. Images are seen as reflections, one overhears conversations being conducted off-camera and one listens for the consequences without actually seeing the incidents' instigators. There are a few sequences of levity as with Akiko's interaction with Watanabe's neighbour and the latter person's with her brother. The earlier almost-monologue itself is delivered with breathless conviction. Speaking of which, each of the admittedly few cast members exudes an amazing ability to make the acting look easy when it is anything but. After all, it is anything but given that the character-driven focus and a lack of special effects and graphics will have to hold our attention. Yet, they do and at length. Ryo Kase, in particular, delivers such a convincing performance that I for one could not have foreseen after seeing him in Hachimitsu To Clover. He might as well not have been an actor in a film, but a boyfriend being lied to by a woman in his real life ("I am not lying to you," she assures him as she lies to him) and deceived as usual making Akiko a shameless wench in more than one way playing it straight as the uncaring female type while Noriaski is as bewildered as any man who has lost a woman to dishonesty. Make no mistake about it. Like Someone In Love's honesty and cruelty lies in showing Akiko as a casual and professional deceiver as she only outwardly frets to not be one or be unhappy about herself and her actions. Her acting is natural and matter-of-fact perhaps practiced from the life of a modern woman. The film, however, disappoints many with its ending. Like the rest of this piece of art leaves much to the imagination of the audience. Using the word 'piece,' however, might be apropos given what the director likely wanted to convey at the end. Include in the disappointed group this writer. Likely a decade ago the joke would have been that the director and studio ran out of money. A more likely culprit is the Zen of Like Someone In Love. Zen is a Chinese Buddhist school that emphasized the now above all else. Earlier in the film Watanabe sings 'whatever will be will be' and alternately counsels Noriaski to let it go and advises Akiko to stop fretting and let things happen. As it turns out he is ignored and is wrong (in that sequence), but the director and writer's script direction is based upon emphasizing the present moment at every turn. Amazing as it is Like Someone In Love falls short because it assumes too much and does not give us a definite ending. Like Someone In Love is quite impressive in another regard. The grandmother is never properly seen, but even with the Japanese capacity to sadden, her part is dismal. She is an old woman in a strange town longing for love and family having left her infirm husband behind for a day only to connect and bond and what happens instead is as sad as anything one could see. The build-up is masterful. Akiko's cruelty to, among others, the older generation and the latter's patience is indeed alternately reminiscent of Tokyo Story and The Only Son and even more cruel because it is so easily rectifiable and generational. Kudos goes to the direction and cinematography which depict such loneliness all around in a metropolis of thirteen million. It should be noted – because of the earlier emphasis on the Japanese sensibility - now that the story and direction come courtesy of an Iranian in this Franco-Japanese co-production, which in the latter case makes it by happenstance related to one of Japan's most controversial films In The Realm Of Senses. Akiko a beautiful woman with such an ugly life, behaviour and personality, except that is how it is usually, isn't it?

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• Beauty is in the subtleties

  oxobabychickxox2013-03-10

  Most of what happens in this film is implicit and off screen. The director chooses to focus on a few brief encounters and a newly forged, fragile relationship between a call girl and an esteemed, older Sociology professor who lives 1 hour outside of the city. Though seemingly simple, plot-wise, the brilliance and intricacies come to life in our minds long after the film ends. The audience isn't provided with a substantial backstory- this is a sliver of time we're exposed to, and we reckon that Akiko is a student who moved to Tokyo and struggled with finances, so she began moonlighting as a call girl after her classes and exams after finding success due to her exceptional, though generic, beauty. She mentions that she often reminds people of others, perhaps her universal familiarity is her allure, allowing her clients to project whatever they want her to be, leaving the real Akiko unfamiliar to everyone including herself- clearly a stranger even to her suspicious (for good reason) and controlling fiancé who we can assume gives the emotionally damaged Akiko some sense of stability in a twisted form of consuming love that she can accept. It's unclear if the relationship was ever good, or if Akiko's compartmentalization and double-life has created the toxic dynamic that exists in the time we're privy to. Akiko's pimp sends her to a client old enough to be her grandfather. Formerly a student of this aging Sociology professor, her pimp holds him in high esteem. It's apparent that Akiko seems comfortable immediately with the professor, and undresses soon after she arrives and passes out in his bed. He's patient with her despite her refusal to eat dinner with him which he prepared for her, and silently watches over her as she sleeps. The next morning he takes her to school while she continues to sleep. In our sleep we are the most vulnerable, so these scenes show us the immediate comfort the two feel in each others' presence. While he waits for her, he meets Akiko's fiancé who is also waiting for her. Through masterful and cryptic dialogue, the fiancé assumes the professor is Akiko's grandfather. We see what we want to see, seems to be the message the director is insisting on despite very obvious clues that not all is what it seems (ex. Akiko's fiancé has an advertisement with Akiko's photo on it advertising her services, Akiko never mentioned her grandfather visiting, only her grandmother, and her grandfather is a fisherman, not a professor). The ambiguity of their relationship echoes that of Abbas' film 'Certified Copy', where we're not sure what's real, what's pretend, what's a dream, and who's who. The abrupt ending literally "shatters" a lot of what we've come to understand in this poetic, soft film. Perhaps making up for the slow beginning and shocking us to our senses, the ending calls into question a much more that happens non diegetically- how did the fiancé find out within the few hours he was denying the truth and now? Is the Professor alright? With so little actually explained in the film, our minds run wild with answers filling in the complex backstories that we personalize. All we really understand is that the Professor sees Akiko as familiar because she resembles his wife and granddaughter, and though nothing sexual happens (at least on screen) the nature of their relationship from the outset is of sexual expectations. Perhaps this film is really discussing the innocence of what has darker pretenses on the exterior, while also evaluating the darkness that exists within an innocent exterior (Akiko).

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• An Iranian director in Japan

  Red-1252013-09-27

  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.

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• A simple masterpiece

  mkian2013-04-24

  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.

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• Love in modern Tokyo

  Davidon802013-04-03

  Part time Tokyo call girl finds an unlikely connection with an old retired sociology professor. Whilst living her double life as student and escort girl her relationship with her hot-hedded, blue collar boyfriend reaches boiling point. Like someone in love, as the title suggest is about the first pangs of love, the period when two people begin the process of understanding the other. In this case it is the old professor who unexpectedly finds himself falling for the young girl. The set up is within the seedier underbelly of Tokyo, yet seedy as the setup may be, there is no overt denouncement of this taboo subject of prostitution or of Japan's social vices. The script and the director uses the setup more to tell a tale of loneliness and discomfort within a sprawling and uncompromising city. The slight romance that is kindled within the older professor is the rapture played out in a fierce and in many ways sad cityscape. Like Someone in Love is not a movie for all tastes. Each scene is long and laborious, many scenes are of simply the characters waiting for the other to appear on screen. It is definitely not a movie for completists, a good case in point would be the somewhat abrupt nature of the final scene. Ultimately the story is about subtleties and there are many blink and you miss it moments. A good example of this would be Akiko's taxi ride through Tokyo at the beginning of this movie, this scene is absolutely heart breaking and is in many ways the pivotal moment of this movie, yet there is virtually no dialogue spoken by the actors on screen, only a series of phone messages playing over the background noise. The simplicity of this scene twinned with Akiko's reaction is enough to have the stoniest of hearts melting by the time the taxi ride has reached it's destination. So if you are willing to stay the duration you may be rewarded with a touching if some what incomplete love story, for those who expect a sense of closure you may find Pretty Woman is more up your street.

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