Like Someone in Love
Like Someone in Love Image
Metascore
76 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 29 Critics What's this?

User Score
7.3 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 4 Ratings

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  • Starring: Rin Takanashi, Ryo Kase, Tadashi Okuno
  • Summary: Abbas Kiarostami, the writer/director of the critically acclaimed "Certified Copy," travels even further afield from his native Iran for this mysteriously beautiful romantic drama filmed entirely in Japan. Like Someone in Love revolves around the brief encounter between an elderly professor (81-year-old stage actor Tadashi Okuno, here playing his first leading role in a film) and a sociology student (Rin Takanashi) who moonlights as a high-end escort. Dispatched to the old man by her boss—one of the professor’s former students—the young woman finds her latest client less interested in sex than in cooking her soup, talking, and playing old Ella Fitzgerald records. Eventually, night gives way to day and a tense standoff with the student’s insanely jealous boyfriend (Ryo Kase); but as usual in 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? (IFC)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 21 out of 29
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 29
  3. Negative: 0 out of 29
  1. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    Feb 14, 2013
    100
    Every shot — everything you see, and everything you don’t — imparts a disturbing and thrilling sense of discovery.
  2. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    Feb 12, 2013
    100
    The movie's sense of immutable desire resonates well after the lights have come up.
  3. Arizona Republic
    Reviewed by: Bill Goodykoontz
    Mar 14, 2013
    80
    Like Someone in Love is not a complicated story, but in Kiarostami’s telling, it is a rich one, and a rewarding one, too.
  4. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    Feb 15, 2013
    60
    Newcomers may be disappointed by such a slender effort, but fans of revered Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami will find plenty to appreciate in his observant followup to 2010’s acclaimed “Certified Copy.”

See all 29 Critic Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 1 out of 1
  1. TVJerry
    3
    Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami travels to Japan for this film about a young hooker who becomes involved with an old professor. Any movie that starts with a long, inert first scene is gonna be slow, but this one takes the prize. First is a restaurant with 2 locked-down cameras for 10 min. Second is in a cab for 15 min, while listens to 8 voicemail msgs. You get the idea. At one point the old man fell asleep behind the wheel of the car for more than a minute. All sequences take place in real time with static camera and low key performances. I had plenty of time to answer a few emails and not miss a thing (even in subtitles) and may be the only person in Richmond to see this. It does have a pretty surprising shaggy dog ending.… Expand

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