Abbas Kiarostami's latest film is an existential mystery

by Sara Michelle Fetters - SGN A&E Writer

LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE
Opens March 15

If you think you know all there is to know about Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, be prepared to learn how wrong you are. While on the surface his latest foray into the world of international cinema, Like Someone in Love, bears similarities with 2010's Certified Copy, in reality the films couldn't be more different. This journey into Japanese society and mores is one part Lost in Translation, another part Vertigo, and a final smattering of the works of the legendary Yasujiro Ozu. Add in deft touches recalling everything from Chungking Express to the director's own Close-Up and you have a cinematic experience quite unlike anything else out there at the moment, and it's easy to see why at last year's Cannes Film Festival many proclaimed Kiarostami's latest a masterpiece while others sat scratching their heads wondering what all the fuss was about.

The story seems simple enough: College student Akiko (Rin Takanashi) is shy and reserved - facts that make her moonlighting as a high-priced escort surprising. She's sent by her boss to the home of elderly sociology professor Takashi (Tadashi Okuno), and what she assumes is going to be nothing more than a night of quiet conversation and sex turns into something altogether different. The next morning at university, Ariko's boyfriend Noriaki (Ryo Kase) mistakes Takashi for her grandfather, the pair deciding to let the deception stand instead of answering potentially embarrassing questions as to why they know one another.

MORE THAN IT APPEARS
Simple, yes, but the movie glides in and out of this narrative in some rather startling and emotionally complicated ways. Kiarostami's script embodies reality but never fully embraces it, the filmmaker crafting a starkly beautiful, if slightly unsettling, mirror world that shows things in a hazy half-light that mixes truth and fantasy in close to equal measure. It's hypnotic, chilling, romantic, rapturous, and distancing, sometimes all at once, the director never allowing the viewer to gain equal footing with his main protagonists, keeping us off-balance right from the moment Akiko enters Takashi's home.

The reserved pacing is a signature of Kiarostami, but that doesn't mean the movie is slow. If anything, he is paying direct homage to Ozu, using his own cultural and personal esthetics to tell a story the iconic Japanese director of Late Spring and Tokyo Story might have deigned to explore himself once upon a time. But the end game is something we haven't seen from Kiarostami before, and the place all of this is heading is a surprise, the energies and desires of the characters coming full circle in a way I honestly can admit I didn't see coming.

BEAUTIFUL SIGHTS, SOUNDS
The movie looks spectacular. Cinematographer Katsumi Yanagijima's (Outrage) captures Tokyo in a way that can't help but recall Christopher Doyle's work for Wong Kar-Wai. At the same time the icy veneer is crisp, clean, and in many ways unique in and of itself. Even better is Reza Narimazadeh's (A Separation) richly involving sound design, every piece feeding another allowing for subtle clues signifying much of the director's true intent.

There is a moderate emotional aloofness that is admittedly noticeable, and the journeys Akiko and Takashi find themselves on don't always resonate as clearly as I kept hoping they would. Nonetheless, Like Someone in Love, freestyling and weaving much like the jazz standard that inspired the title, is a refreshing blend of heart, lust, longing, desire, family, and friendship I couldn't take my eyes off of. Kiarostami proves once again he is one of the true cinematic titans working today, and even with minor reservations his latest is a masterful excursion into existential consciousness I'll happily drown myself in again soon.

 Share on Facebook

Share on MySpace!

    Share on Delicious

Share on StumbleUpon!