Butler's Cinema Scene

Rin Takanashi

“LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE” My rating: B (Now showing at the Tivoli)

109 minutes | No MPAA rating

I’m not exactly sure that I like “Like Someone in Love.” But it’s stuck with me for a couple of weeks now, and that’s a sure indication that Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s latest film is getting the job done.

You could call this the story of a call girl, one of her clients and her jealous boyfriend. That’s accurate as far as it goes, but it gives an entirely wrong impression of what this quiet, thoughtful, non-lurid movie is all about.

It begins in a noisy Tokyo bar where Akiko (Rin Takanashi) is having a drink, talking to a girlfriend, and getting some heartfelt advice from her pimp, the middle-aged bar owner who’s about as threatening as a civil service clerk.

For the first 10 or so minutes of the film we view the establishment from Akiko’s vantage point – we don’t see her. But we do hear her on her cell phone talking to her boyfriend, who apparently has no idea that she is putting herself through college by working as an escort. She lies to him about her whereabouts and her plans for the night.

The very word “escort” is vague.  Is Akiko actually a prostitute or just a companion for hire? When the camera finally does turn to her she seems terribly childlike and innocent. But then perhaps that’s a role she plays…Japanese businessmen notoriously have a thing for schoolgirls.

Akiko’s assignment requires an hour-long taxi ride to the Tokyo suburbs; along the way she declines to answer the many phone messages from her grandmother, who is visiting the city for the day and would like to get together.

Tadashi Okumo

Her client for the evening is Takashi (Tadashi Okumo), a retired university professor. Their conversation is polite and formal, and it soon becomes clear that gentle old fellow is less interested in sex than in sharing with Akiko the meal he has prepared. Instead she wanders off to his bedroom, disrobes, and is soon sound asleep.

The next morning Takashi drives her to the University, where she is met by her suspicious boyfriend Noriaki (Ryo Kase), an automobile mechanic. He demands that she account for her absence, but his indignation cools when he notices Tajkasi, whom he assumes is Akiko’s grandfather.

While she’s in class, the old man and the young man have a conversation about love…it’s pretty clear that Takashi is enjoying this chance to impart wisdom and, perhaps, take some heat off Akiko by defusing the kid’s anger. Noriaki is so impressed with the old fellow that he gives him a free tune up.

Ryo Kase

For most of its running time, “Like Someone in Love” is anti-dramatic. Whether in the bar, in the cab, or in Takashi’s apartment, the movie is content to sit and observe. Its rhythms are natural and unforced – just the opposite of melodramatic…which is another way of saying that lots of viewers will probably be bored stiff with it.

Kiarostami asks a lot of his audience with an extended sequence in Noriaki’s garage that keeps us waiting nearly as long as a visit to a real mechanic would.

And I’m not sure how I feel about the film’s explosive conclusion, even though there are plenty of hints sprinkled about of potential violence.

But the look of the film, with Tokyo’s jungle of neon reflected in a taxicab’s windows, or the warm clutter of the old professor’s apartment, is almost unbearably tactile.

Nor is there any doubt about the excellence of the performances. Particularly impressive is Kase, who pulls off the not-inconsiderable coup of making Noriaki both a dangerous hothead and, in calmer moments, a genuinely OK guy (or why would Akiko have anything to do with him?).

|Robert W. Butler