This review/essay features spoilers, but it is
not a film that can be ruined by knowing the plot because it is not a
plot-based film. But I feel obligated to warn you.
Iranian
filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami is the mastermind behind many of the great art house
films of the last 40 years[i].
His latest film, Like Someone in Love,
is produced with Japanese and French money and is filmed in Tokyo. Not only
does Kiarostami continue his international tour of the last few years, but he
also plays with the common theme in his career—what roles do people play?[ii]
This time
around, with Like Someone In Love, he
runs with Japanese culture mixed with worldly themes. And again, Kiarostami has
created a masterful film. The cast of characters features an old professor
(Takashi, played by Tadashi Okuno), a young call girl (Akiko, played by Rin
Rakanashi), her obsessive boyfriend (Noriaki, played by Ryo Kase), the
professor’s nosy neighbor, and the people each of these characters pretend to
be throughout the film’s runtime. Most of the story takes place inside cars and
in the meandering moments between what we usually take for plot. After anything
significant happens in this film, the characters spend time driving from one
location to another, and in those in-between moments, we learn more about them
than any other time.
Akiko is
ashamed of her job as a high class prostitute, as can be seen at numerous
moments, but not least of all when she asks her taxi driver, who is taking her
to the professor to “escort,” to drive around the same statue several times
because her grandmother is standing there, waiting for her. She has no
intention of seeing her grandmother, but she cries thinking about abandoning
her family for her job, feeling quite powerless about the situation. Of all of the
great, quiet sequences in this film, this one is the most beautiful and the
least ambiguous—a great moment to gain bearings in such an ethereal film.
Takashi is
a former college professor of sociology and a book translator. These
professions speak directly to the film’s complex meaning, since it is a different
society and language from Kiarostami’s own and it deals with the way people act
with one another. Takashi and Akiko first meet one another awkwardly in the
elder’s apartment. Akiko uses the restroom and comes out a different woman, one
of her two major roles, playing the character of high class escort for the old
man, who is treating her like he would someone on a casual date or a polite
get-together. He has no intention of sleeping with her as far as I can tell.
They discuss art and life, and Akiko grows tired and goes to bed before having
any wine or dinner that Takashi has prepared for her. Takashi wants
companionship, for he is very lonely as we learn later from his neighbor.
Then he
takes her home the next day. He meets her abusive and wild fiancé, Noriaki, a
mechanic who quickly offers to fix Takashi’s car because there is a basic
misunderstanding—he believes Takashi is Akiko’s grandfather, and while Takashi
does not tell him that he is not her grandfather, he doesn’t fight the
assumption either. Their daily adventures continue together, and the themes of
the film start clicking at about this point. Takashi has taken the role of
grandfather believably, and he shows to be a naturally paternal figure. But it
is a false role nonetheless. She is Akiko’s john, not her grandpa.
A lot of
what we see of the characters comes from behind windows or off of mirrors,
screens of glass, and this is especially true in the car. Even in Takashi’s
apartment, we see Akiko reflected from his TV screen for a while. The transparent
or reflective surfaces give us glimpses into the souls of these characters,
into the hearts of their sadness (or sadness of their hearts?), and especially
the lies they tell. Each character plays a role, as we do in real life. Takashi
plays the role of Akiko’s grandfather, Akiko doesn’t resist and uses Takashi as
an elderly/paternal/maternal figure in lieu of her own abandoned grandmother,
and Akiko’s fiancé believes in the traditional role of a husband as the
provider and master of the household. Takashi sees the flaws in their
relationship, but as most grandparents and parents find, they have very little influence
in how they directly affect the lives of children and young people. Rather,
they are left to pick up the pieces and care for them. And Takashi does this
for Akiko, until the abrupt and chaotic end of the film.
There is
a small, important moment late in the film, where Takashi picks up Akiko after
the girl has been hit by Noriaki. He brings her home and goes to the pharmacy
to get her medicine. Akiko has a discussion with Takashi’s nosy neighbor, who
looks at Akiko at first from behind a sheer curtain, and always through the
window, even they are engaged in conversation about how much the woman loves
Takashi and cares for her very real mentally handicapped brother. We learn from
the woman and her constant gazes at the Takashi residence that his wife has
been gone for a long time and his daughter never visits. Again, he is supremely
lonely. Even the woman in the window assumes Akiko is Takashi’s granddaughter, so
the ruse is complete. Until Noriaki arrives at Takashi’s home.
We, the
audience, are like the woman in the window. We watch these characters live
their lives, and are powerless to affect them. Takashi, who is in the midst of
the action, is also powerless. We, in the audience, are always living vicariously
through the characters in movies. Like
Someone in Love is no different. We care for these sad characters, and even
get to see Noriaki at his best and worst, being kind of condescendingly helpful
and wildly violent[iii],
to show his dynamism, and in the end, Kiarostami slaps us in the face with one
of the most violent climaxes I’ve ever seen. And there was no blood.
Noriaki is
demanding to enter Takashi’s home, to get to Akiko, and he pounds on the door
and screams. Children playing can be heard. The woman in the window and her
brother can be heard. And as Takashi nervously looks out a window, a brick
flies through it, crashing through the barrier between him and the abuser. Tashaki
falls to the ground, and it is unclear whether he was hit or not. That barrier between
us and Takashi is also broken, as represented through that window and every
screen or barrier between characters, since we are watching through a screen as
well. We play roles just as Takashi and Akiko do. Kiarostami reflects real life
to his audiences, and he always has. The metaphor might be at its strongest
here, in his latest film.
The
window is broken. The film is over. The end.
I give Like Someone In Love a lite 9 out of 10.
I give Like Someone In Love a lite 9 out of 10.
[i]
In 1990, Abbas
Kiarostami made the pseudo-documentary Close-Up,
which is one of the most brilliant combinations of documentary filmmaking and
staged drama filmmaking in the history of the art forms. He won the Cannes Film
Festival’s prestigious grand prize award (Palme d’Or) in 1997 for Taste of Cherry. His long career
continues to produce great films—arguably his best, Certified Copy, came out in 2010. Certified Copy deconstructed marriage and the roles that husbands
and wives fill, even through two relative strangers. Juliette Binoche and British
opera singer William Shimell played opposite one another in Kiarostami’s first internationally
produced film. Kiarostami continues his international tour, much as Woody Allen
has in the last decade, and this time his focus is in Tokyo instead of Tuscany,
as it was in Certified Copy.
[ii]
The meta-theme of roles ties wonderfully into films
and Kiarostami is the king in this regard. Great filmmakers like Akira
Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and Michael Haneke have expressed
admiration for his art. And it is not
hard to see why. Kiarostami’s vision is uniquely his own, and while he has riffed
off of the themes of others (See Certified
Copy through the lens of Linklater or Wong Kar Wai and much older
directors, and the inspirations are there) his vision is always unique and
never a retread. He takes inspiration and runs with it.
[iii] Off-topic/meta-moment:
I love lovely adjectives and I use too many.
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