Like Someone in Love

LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE is the newest film by master Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.

On the heels of his acclaimed Tuscany-set CERTIFIED COPY, Kiarostami (TASTE OF CHERRY, THE WIND WILL CARRY US) travels to Japan for this mysterious and beguiling romantic drama, which once again finds him playfully blurring the line between fiction and cinematic construct. When Akiko (Rin Takanashi), a lovely Tokyo student who moonlights as a call girl, is dispatched to a new client in the suburbs, she is surprised to find the shy and elderly Takashi (81-year-old stage actor Tadashi Okuno), a committed academic constantly distracted by work-related phone calls. The lonely widower seems far more interested in playing house than having sex, however, and the young woman soon falls asleep. The next day, when the two encounter Akiko’s volatile boyfriend Noriaki (Ryo Kase), Takashi plays into Noriaki’s assumption that he is actually Akiko’s grandfather. As the three settle into their new roles, Takashi finds himself becoming the protector that Akiko so desperately needs.

LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and was also featured at the 2012 Toronto and New York film festivals. It was included in the 2012 AFI Fest as a World Cinema Selection.

"A film of intense visual beauty. Its cinematography embodies the ambiguities in the story of an encounter between an elderly professor and a student moonlighting as a call girl."
- Stephen Holden, The New York Times

"Exquisitely made. An enchanting game of misfired passions and mistaken identities."
- Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter