Like Someone in Love

Crossing cultures and language barriers is something happening more and more in cinema, with well-known directors establishing their name for making films from their homeland, looking abroad to try out their skills in a different culture. With 'Like Someone in Love', Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami heads to Japan to work with a Japanese cast and crew to look at the concept of love from various different angles and perspectives.

Akiko, a young student working as a prostitute, ignores both her grandmother and fiancé to let herself be talked into working the night before an exam. But her client, an aging academic, seems more to simply want an evening's company than full sex with a woman. Seeing her off to her exam the next morning, both Akiko and her client, Takashi, are left to deal with the consequences of her deceit.

'Like Someone in Love' is a film that is lacking in many respects, but indulgent in others. Various plot holes leave the audience having to make their own deductions as to how things developed, rather than making it clear on watching. Time that could have been spent on this is instead spent on lengthy shots with little actual action. The first two scenes consist of one half of an extended phone conversation, followed by a close up of Akiko in the back of a taxi listening to all seven of her voicemail messages. With this the case, the audience can be forgiven for thinking that the next two hours will be excruciatingly long.

The film, despite lacking in plot, is more an analysis of the different relationships Akiko has with the people in her life: her dutiful grandmother, whom she ignores; her prone-to-aggression fiancé, Noriaki, whom she deceives; and her client, the aging Takashi, whom she turns to in crisis.

The most likable of the three main characters is Takashi, whose bumbling around Akiko provide some humour and his earnest assistance to her show him to simply be a kind man that is lonely. His discussion with Noriaki is perhaps the film's most important, indicating that neither Noriaki and Akiko are ready for marriage.

But while humour and wisdom come from Takashi in parts, other flaws lead 'Like Someone in Love' to miss as much as it hits. While the question is asked as to what Akiko sees in Noriaki, the question could also be asked with the roles reversed, with the  only good relationship Akiko appearing to have one with someone she has known less than 24 hours, making her less of an appealing character than required in the lead; coming across more as a spoiled brat than abused victim. The sudden development in Noriaki's anger requires assumptions to be made rather than good storytelling.

The intentional sudden and abrupt ending shows the problems that misguided love has brought the trio to, and in that sense the film works in getting its point across. Though one could argue that Kiarostami takes too long to get there. Having made many shorts in the past, perhaps 'Like Someone in Love' would have been better made in a much shorter format, with the idea good, but the execution, like the film's characters, somewhat misguided and indulgent.