The shape of misunderstanding
Like Someone in Love is Abbas Kiarostami’s second film made outside Iran, and his first set entirely in Japan. It is a drama built on sustained misrecognition: between generations, roles, intentions and social surfaces. The film does not seek to resolve those gaps but to hold them in quiet tension — to let a grandmother’s voicemail, a taxi circling a station square, or an elderly man’s unspoken hospitality occupy the same moral and emotional weight as a violent confrontation. Its aim is not narrative propulsion but atmospheric fidelity: to register how dignity persists in compromised situations, how silence functions as both evasion and resistance, and how urban space — Tokyo’s rain-slicked streets, Yokohama’s quiet apartment blocks — absorbs and refracts human uncertainty. It works within strict formal constraints: Japanese language, real locations, no non-diegetic music, no flashbacks or exposition. This is not minimalism for its own sake, but a method of withholding so that what remains — a glance, a hesitation, a doorbell’s chime — carries consequence. Word count: 142
The look of it
The story unfolds across two days, anchored by three central figures whose relationships are defined by what is withheld rather than spoken. Rin Takanashi plays Akiko with physical restraint: her posture tightens when lying, her voice drops when deflecting, her hands rarely still. Tetsu Watanabe’s Takashi moves with deliberate slowness; his gestures are economical, his silences weighted with decades of academic solitude. Ryō Kase’s Noriaki is less a caricature of jealousy than a study in masculine insecurity made visible through proximity — he fills frames not with rage but with restless, unmoored energy. Katsumi Yanagishima’s cinematography avoids flourish: long takes, shallow depth of field, natural light filtered through apartment windows and car windshields. Bahman Kiarostami’s editing sustains duration without indulgence — scenes end just after their emotional pivot, never before. There are no close-ups for emphasis, no score to cue response. The craft serves a single principle: to keep the viewer at the same uncertain distance as the characters themselves. Word count: 153
What stays with you
What lands is the cumulative pressure of small, unremarkable decisions — Akiko asking the taxi to circle, Takashi choosing not to correct Noriaki’s assumption, the way Noriaki’s hand hovers near Akiko’s jaw before pulling back. These moments gain resonance because they are neither dramatised nor explained. The film trusts the viewer to sit with ambiguity: the grandmother’s presence is felt but never seen; Takashi’s past as a sociologist is implied only in his questions; Akiko’s work is named but never shown. The final sequence — the thrown object, the fall — arrives without warning or aftermath, leaving the consequences suspended. This refusal of closure is not evasion but precision: it mirrors how violence often enters ordinary life — abruptly, without fanfare, and with no immediate reckoning. The film’s restraint makes the few moments of physical contact — a hand on a shoulder, a bloodied mouth — land with disproportionate force. Its emotional logic is cumulative, not causal, and that accumulation feels earned. Word count: 152
Where the frame slips
What does not land is the structural reliance on coincidence as narrative engine. Akiko’s grandmother arriving unannounced, Noriaki happening upon Takashi at precisely the right moment, the former student appearing at the garage — these are not implausibilities the film transforms into meaning, but hinges the film asks us to accept without friction. Noriaki’s psychology remains underdeveloped: his volatility reads more as plot necessity than character logic, and his final escalation lacks grounding in earlier behaviour. The film’s commitment to surface realism occasionally strains against its own ellipticality — we are asked to infer Akiko’s exhaustion from her posture, but not given enough context to gauge whether her choices stem from necessity, resignation or something else. The ending’s abruptness works formally, but its emotional impact depends on prior investment in relationships the film deliberately keeps at arm’s length. Some viewers will find this withholding generative; others will find it withholding without yield. Word count: 150
What it’s really about
The themes that matter are not love or deception in the abstract, but the architecture of care under constraint: how Takashi offers hospitality without demanding reciprocity, how Akiko performs availability while guarding interiority, how Noriaki mistakes possession for intimacy. Ageing is present not as decline but as accumulated distance — from institutions, from peers, from the rhythms of younger life. Class operates quietly: Takashi’s apartment is spacious but worn, Akiko’s student flat is cramped but clean, Noriaki’s garage is functional but isolated. Language itself becomes thematic — Japanese speech patterns, the rhythm of voicemails, the pauses between sentences — all reinforce how much is communicated without syntax. The film treats Tokyo not as backdrop but as participant: train stations, taxis, intercoms and apartment lobbies function as thresholds where identities are tested, assumed or discarded. There is no nostalgia here, no critique of modernity — only attention to how people navigate its neutral, indifferent infrastructure. Word count: 149
Who it’s for
This film is for viewers who value duration over revelation, who find tension in stillness and meaning in omission. It suits those accustomed to Kiarostami’s earlier work, or to directors like Hirokazu Kore-eda or Tsai Ming-liang, where emotional weight accrues through repetition and restraint. It is not for viewers who require clear motivation, psychological exposition or narrative resolution — those expecting a conventional drama about prostitution or intergenerational conflict will find the film evasive. Anyone needing explicit stakes, moral clarity or catharsis should look elsewhere. A viewer who values strong plotting over atmosphere, or who finds ambiguity frustrating rather than fertile, will leave unrewarded. The film assumes patience as a condition of engagement, not a virtue to be praised. That assumption is its strength and its limit. Word count: 147
Is it worth your evening
It is worth your evening if you are willing to meet it on its terms: ninety minutes of measured pacing, sparse dialogue and unresolved tension. Its value lies not in what it delivers but in how it recalibrates attention — training the eye to notice the weight of a pause, the significance of a missed connection, the quiet persistence of dignity in compromised circumstances. Those who find such recalibration rewarding will consider it time well spent; those who do not will feel it overextended. It is not a film that argues, but one that observes — and observation requires time, stillness and tolerance for uncertainty. Its modest box office and narrow critical consensus reflect its demands, not its failure. To call it ‘difficult’ is to mistake its method for its intent. It is simply slow, precise and unyielding in its focus. Word count: 148
