As it turns out, it's the first, not the last, word of the title that's key to this droll, elegant but faintly trying study in emotional artifice.
Like Someone in Love(ライク・サムワン・イン・ラブ)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Japan, France · 2012
1h 49m
Director Abbas Kiarostami
Starring Rin Takanashi, Tadashi Okuno, Ryo Kase, Denden
Genre Drama
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An old man and a young woman meet in Tokyo. She knows nothing about him, he thinks he knows her. He welcomes her into his home, she offers him her body. But the web that is woven between them in the space of twenty four hours bears no relation to the circumstances of their encounter.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
While not his best work, Like Someone in Love is a nimble expression of Kiarostami's appeal: He remains one of the few directors capable of pulling you into a narrative and making you question its motives at every turn.
The director has made disappointing films before — a more generous word might be transitional — but never one so slight.
The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth
There is a fine line between meeting an audience halfway and witholding enough without falling into self-indulgence, but Kiarostami can't make that balance here. Enigmatic and dull to a maddening degree, Like Someone In Love finds Kiarostami spinning his wheels.
Is this the stuff of gripping drama? Not at all. But like nearly all of Kiarostami’s films, it’s the stuff of good conversation.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
The movie is playful and makes no easy moral judgments.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It is a beautifully shot, and very nicely acted beginning to something: but finally frustrating.
Village Voice by Scott Foundas
The movie's sense of immutable desire resonates well after the lights have come up.
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