In this wonderfully self-assured piece by Abbas Kiarostami he combines intellectual ambition with a relaxed attitude of someone who no longer needs to prove himself. After his Italian excursion with Juliette Binoche in CERTIFIED COPY, the Iranian director’s latest film takes him to Tokyo, the hometown of Yazujiro Ozu, one of Kiarostami’s role models. It is clear that the filmmaker feels comfortable in the Japanese metropolis with its cramped quarters, heavy traffic, and the reserved, polite manners of the Japanese. Like Ozu, the narrative is simple and the staging sophisticated. Akiko, a part-time call girl, decides to spend the evening with a client, a lonely, elderly academic, Takashi, instead of picking her grandmother up from the train station. However, Takashi seems more interested in cooking for Akiko than in having sex. The next day the pair runs into Akiko’s boyfriend who doesn’t know that Akiko moonlights as an escort. Through a series of minimalistic dialogues that take place in a moving car, LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE composes a dense, ambiguous, and emotionally charged narrative that is sprinkled with elements of surprise and uncertainties. The result is a quiet, incisive film that ends with a bang.

Lukas Förster

Translation: Carla McDougall