Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami (Certified Copy, Shirin, Taste of Cherry) turns his gaze to Japan for this beautifully shot romantic drama.
Like Someone in Love revolves around the brief encounter between an elderly professor, Takashi (the wonderful 81-year-old stage actor Tadashi Okuno) and a sociology student, Akiko (Rin Takanashi) who moonlights as a high-end escort.
Akiko soon discovers that her latest client is less interested in sex and more interested in cooking her soup, talking, and playing old Ella Fitzgerald records. Eventually, night gives way to day and a tense standoff with the Akiko’s jealous boyfriend (Ryō Kase); but as usual with Kiarostami, nothing is quite as it appears on the surface.
Are these characters – who conjure in one another the specters of regret and roads not taken – meeting by chance, or is it fate? Is this love, or merely something like it?
