Like Someone in Love (2013)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Are you kidding me?????????People praising this film are definitely pretentious reviews. I really don't care if it's by a well known Iranian director; positive reviews seem to show bias towards that.I can tolerate slow films, but this really takes it to a whole new level. Just pointless and mundane dialogue. Absolutely no story at all and the ending is the most cheapest, laughable, abrupt ending ever. It's like all that time wasted being tortured watching this film, the ending is like being knocked out right in the face and then being spit on and laughed at. It's that awful. Nothing really happens in this film and 2 hours you are wasting time watching them walk from one side of the room to the other and come back, pick up the phone, or just driving or having pointless small talk - hell even the main character suddenly falls asleep during the film when he's driving! It's like he suddenly mimicked how the audience felt about the film. To think the movie couldn't get worse, towards the end we have to listen to this creepy crazy old lady looking out the window ramble on and on - basically the whole film involves really annoying scenes like that with pointless ramblings - and the ending... it's like the director/writer was like "ah, I can't think of anything to write... I'll just end the film here." I love Japan but this is not a real film. It's an absolute waste of your time. Poor writing, acting, cinematography... Seriously, watching paint dry is more exciting than this film. This film makes Sophia Coppola's "Lost In Translation" seem like a fast-paced action movie masterpiece. Fast forward button on your remote will become your new best friend when watching this film. (You'll also be eager to go for the Stop/Eject button too, but I actually sat through this torturous film)

Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, has crafted something I can only define as "patient", as some scenes get drawn out considerably and all in silence no less. However, there are three dialogue driven moments throughout the movie, that really engage and offer fresh perspective on their subject matter.A young woman moonlights as a prostitute, and one night is assigned to an old University professor who is more interested in making her dinner rather than sex. Throughout the next day, he unwittingly becomes more entangled in the girls life by meeting her erratic boyfriend and tries to defuse the tension between all of them. By the end of that day, she arrives back on his door bruised and he takes her in. Ultimately the boyfriend shows up, resulting in a "conflict" with a very abrupt ending.For as lovely as some of the dialogue is and how well acted some scenes are, there is something here severely lacking that stops me from rating the movie higher. It's very well shot, and has a melancholic charm that could benefit from just a little more music input.Final Verdict: Kiarostami is to be commended for such a feat. Hopefully we hear more from this director, and a little more polish to draw us in further next time. 6.5/10.

Kiarostami in Japan, what bliss and promise! I'm always interested when foreign filmmakers film in Japan, how that worldview illuminates them. Chris Marker captured the most evocative coming and going of things in Sans Soleil, on the flipside for me is Wenders who completely misses Zen in his film about Ozu, mistaking emptiness for modern lack. Coppola's is merely passable for my taste.But Kiarostami is not merely drawn to images, his whole world conveys a Persian Zen of sorts—his Wind was the most clear, all about finding meaning in things and their cyclical drift being what they are. Certified Copy added more story, but the fact remained of his being the most essentially Buddhist filmmaker in the West since Antonioni, drawing up the same realizations about self and time.So what does he find here, what illumination?There are three main implications woven together, all derived from a Buddhist view; the transience of things, with people coming and going at the bar before the girl, the taxi drive with Tokyo nightlife fleeing past, circling around the grandmother but driving on without stopping; illusory self, we are not sure at first who the girl or the old man are, no fixed roles but two people in each other's company, the resemblance to the girls in the painting and photograph, the old man posing as the grandfather later in the car and her flyer that comes up, all pointing to the fluidity of self; ignorance born from desire in the fiancé with his phonecalls and later showing up on the door.Kiarostami captures the essence of Buddhism, not interpreting themes but unearthing the visual flow from ordinary life. He films the air of anticipation, the cautious exchange. True to Japan, he films the drama with no needless suffering, as awareness, with that faint melancholy they know over there as mono no aware, which comes from a notion of time where things are not inevitable as we understand in the West when we talk about fate, nor could they be anything else than what's before the eyes.What will be will be, says the old man who poses as the grandfather to both protect the girl and conceal his misdeed. We have this wonderful ambiguity all through the thing. There is no problem of evil see in Buddhism and Kiarostami's cinema alike. No moral blame in that the girl does what she does to go through college and ignores her grandma, or that the old man desired the company of someone like her that night or even that he lies about being the grandfather.But when what will be is finally at hand and the old man looks confused and foolish as he faces a beating, what's the good of all the philosophizing then? But that's when Kiarostami abandons the story, probably thinking he has evoked enough and we should mull over the rest. I consider this a real miss, a poor ending. We don't need any concrete answer of course. It's just that ending it at that point in the story, with the karmic noise but not the echo back into life, we forget all about the girl, the sweet fragile self who is not the dolled-up face in the flyer, we forget about the waiting grandmother, it's all cleaved away from the film.

This is a film that shows a night and day in the life of one particular Japanese call girl and her customer. (But to be clear, there are no sexual situations.)As some of the other reviewers have noted, there is a wonderful immersion into the moments of the characters in this film, with each act seemingly shown in real time. I compare this aspect of it to things like Elephant (2003) or Bir zamanlar Anadolu'da (2011) (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia), both superior films that made this approach work.That is why I am disappointed that this film wasn't actually any good. There's a worthwhile film here, if only they'd filmed it.At the end of the film, reasonable audiences reasonably expect an ending. There is no end to this film. The filmmakers simply ran out of ... what? script? cash? patience? ideas? ... and simply started the end credits. If this was Lord of the Rings, I'd know to expect the next third of the story in the sequel. But it's not.The end is one of those moments in film when you realize the writer-director is telling audiences to f--- off, just to see who tolerates it. From the looks of it, quite a few did.