(Japan/France, 109 min.)
Written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Tadashi Okuno, Rin Takanashi.
I am a fool in love. Like
Someone in Love, the new film by art cinema master Abbas Kiarostami (Certified Copy), is a beautiful romance.
It's a sensuous drama with no happily ever after and no glass slipper at the
end of its tale. Like Someone in Love
is definitely not a love story, but you’re bound to fall in love with it.
Unsure from whom the voice is coming, one must gaze around
the lounge and evaluate each female in the room. As one looks at the lips of
each candidate and tries to match her speech pattern to the syntax of the
subtitled monologue—this film by the Iranian auteur is entirely in Japanese (more on that in a moment)—this
woman becomes a mystery. Then, one young girl (who seemed like an early
contender to be the voice’s owner) gestures to a character off-screen. Kiarostami
then reveals the source of the anxiety: she’s a beautiful young girl named
Akiko (played by an impressive Rin Takanaski).
Akiko is on a date. We know this because the seat opposite
from her is empty but it’s paired with a second glass of wine. Like Someone in Love introduces Akiko
with no backstory and no context. Kiarostami lets the conversation play out in
real time and invites the audience to meet Akiko as if we’ve just walked into
the café, or are seated nearby and eavesdrop mid-conversation. Why Akiko
quarrels with her boyfriend is unclear. He seems like a hyper-obsessive
Svengali even though we never hear his voice. Ten to fifteen minutes of
one-sided conversation pass by and the mystery behind Akiko only becomes
greater. Her companion briefly intervenes during the tail end of the
conversation, but Akiko shushes him away and fibs to her boyfriend that she’s
sharing wine with a female companion. The mystery now becomes whether Akiko’s
boyfriend is jealous, abusive, or rightfully concerned.
Akiko leaves the bar and takes an extended taxi ride home.
This beautiful, quiet, and composed girl only appears stranger by the minute as
Like Someone in Love examines its
protagonist in nosy long takes. Takanaski makes Akiko more enigmatic by the
minute, as the actress morphs through a range of emotions without shifting in
her seat. Indifferent, pensive, and then altogether morose, Akiko seems
troubled—what secrets is this girl harboring? What is she running from?
Like Someone in Love
introduces its second partner when Akiko’s cab arrives at its destination. An
elderly professor, Takashi (Tadashi Okuno, equally strong), invites Akiko into his home. With
dinner set and champagne awaiting her, Akiko now looks like a bashful escort.
Their conversation is too modest and innocent, though, to be a transaction
between a prostitute and her john. The man could be her grandfather, if not for
how candidly he compares Akiko a portrait and observes that she looks just like
his wife.
The sexy music Takashi selects to heighten the mood is “Like
Someone in Love,” crooned with breathy passion by Ella Fitzgerald. The “like”
in the film’s title, piqued by the desire in Fitzgerald’s song, is surely
ironic. Like Someone in Love is an
anti-love story. Kiarostami refuses to grant his audience a loving embrace or a
tender kiss. There is no passion between the characters onscreen—only silence,
longing, and anger.
There is nevertheless a sense of a relationship blossoming
between Akiko and Takashi. The girl stays with the professor for much longer
than he presumably paid her. This encounter is not a one-night stand. The anti-romantic
beauty of Kiarostami’s flawlessly composed long takes (lensed by
cinematographer Katsumi Yanagijima) calls to mind the poetic realism of Michael
Haneke’s Amour, which also said
something new about the power of romance through a most unconventional love
story. Like Someone in Love, however,
uses the lengthy, elliptical views of Akiko and Takashi to confront one’s
expectations for love stories. The film is more like an Asian horror film, as
Kiarostami hooks the viewer through a slow build of character and atmosphere,
and then kills the mood with an explosive turn of events. Like Someone in Love only seems like a love story on the surface.
This latest effort might not be quite as enthralling as the sensuous
intellectualism of Certified Copy,
which was also an anomaly among romances, but Like Someone in Love is still another exciting entry from one of
cinema’s masters. The imaginative level-headedness of this production continues
Kiarostami’s preoccupation with art and life—like the trial in Close-Up or the art imitating life in Certified Copy—and perhaps offers one of
his better conflations between the two. The story between Akiko and Takashi
unfolds like life itself, but it’s only like
two people in love. A cinematic semblance can never be the real thing.
Like Someone in Love
should also be a highlight for film buffs to explore trendy topics in film theory
and chatter. Kiarostami, popular among the festival crowd and academics, is
invoked as a contemporary for national cinema and world cinema alike. His early
works brought considerable international attention to Iranian cinema and, partly
due to the lack of availability of other Iranian films and partly due to a
wealth of poetic imagery, spawned much debate for a robust national auteur. As his films travelled, the
director did the same. Certified Copy marked
the first time Kiarostami shot outside Iran (in France) and transnational
cinema quickly had a new poster boy. Like
Someone in Love should thus be an intriguing case for world cinema
debaters. The film carries many of the same traits that popularized the
director’s Iranian works, but it is a French-Japanese co-production shot in
Japan. The dialogue is Japanese and the credits are in French, if one wants an
even greater sense of fusion.
Like Someone in Love
might be the film that breaks the debate for national cinema. Some consider the
concept dated, while others consider it essential. Like Someone in Love is actually a perfect counterpoint to the
conundrum of Canadian cinema, which often causes rumblings when its stories
cross elsewhere. The distinct traits of a filmmaker travel from one place to
another, thus making a film both specific and universal. Opening up one factor
in turn creates new possibilities for the other. Like Someone in Love might seem like a Japanese film, but it is it
a Japanese film at all?
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Like Someone in Love is currently playing in Toronto at TIFF BellLightbox.
It opens in Ottawa at
The ByTowne in April 19th and screens at The Mayfair July 8-9.
