Like Someone in Love

Like Someone in Love, named after Ella Fitzgerald’s jazz standard,is a droll, elegant and playful film preoccupied with identities mistaken and assumed,laced with references to the films of Yasujiro Ozu. Akiko,a pretty and slightly distant sociology student works nights as a high- class escort. Instead of studying for her exams and meeting her grandmother, she reluctantly goes to the house of her latest client, retired sociology professor Takashi. The next morning, she allows him to give her a ride to university, crossing paths with her volatile boyfriend, Noriaki (Ryo Kase). The latter assume that the kind old man is Akiko's grandfather, thus allowing an odd role-playing routine to begin, until,perhaps, the hoax is discovered.

After Certified Copy and Ten, Like Someone in Love offers, with pristine images and long takes of the streets of Tokyo at night,  a new facet of Kiarostami’s study of human relations and unforeseeable encounters.

Official Selection, Competition, Cannes Film Festival

Official Selection, Toronto Film Festival

Official Selection, New York Film Festival

Week Commencing 29.11.2013

Abbas Kiarostami was born in 1940 in Tehran.

Between 1960 to 1968, he started his cinematographic career designing credits and directing advertisements. With a friend in 1969, Kiarostami founded the Cinematographic Department of the Institute for Children and Young Adults Intellectual Development that, in the course of the years, has produced a significant number of high quality Iranian movies.

By 1970 Abbas Kiarostami had directed numerous short films and features. At the end of the 1980s Kiarostami obtained a well-deserved international recognition, winning important awards including Cannes’ Palme d’or in 1997 and Venice’s Golden Lion in 1999.

With Certified Copy (2009), Kiarostami starts shooting outside Iran with an international cast, including Juliette Binoche who went on to receive the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. Like Someone In Love brings Abbas Kiarostami to Japan, another universe for him to discover.

Filmography

2012             LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE

Cannes 2012: Official Selection - In Competition

2010             CERTIFIED COPY (Copie conforme)

Cannes 2010: Best Actress award for Juliette Binoche

2008             SHIRIN

2007             WHERE IS MY ROMEO?

Segment from the collective film TO EACH HIS OWN CINEMA directed for Cannes 60^th Anniversary

4 video letters to Victor Erice

2005             CORRESPONDANCES

ROADS OF KIAROSTAMI

TICKETS segment from the film COLLECTIF directed by Abbas Kiarostami, Ermanno Olmi and Ken Loach

2004             10 ON TEN

FIVE Dedicated to Ozu

2002             TEN

2001             ABC AFRICA

1999             THE WIND WILL CARRY US (Baad ma ra khahad bord)

Venice 1999: Jury Grand Prix, International FIPRESCI Critic’s Prize

1997             TASTE OF CHERRY (Tam’e Guilass) Cannes 1997: Palme d’Or

BIRTH OF LIGHT

1995             AN EGG (UN OEUF) segment from the film LUMIERE AND COMPANY

REPÉRAGES segment from the film À PROPOS DE NICE, LA SUITE…

1994             THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES (Zir-e derakhtan-e zeytoun)

1992             AND LIFE GOES ON (Zendegi edamé dârad)

1990             CLOSE-UP (Nema-ye Nazdik)

1989             HOMEWORK ( Mashgh-e Shab)

1987             WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOME? (Kaneh-ye doust kojast ?)

1984             FIRST GRADERS (Avali ha)

1983             LE CONCITOYEN

1982             THE CHORUS (Hamsarayan)

1981             ORDERLY OR UNORDERLY

(original title: Be tartib va bedoun-e tartib)

1980             DENTAL HYGIENE (Behdasht-e Dandan)

1979             FIRST CASE, SECOND CASE (Ghazieh-ye shekl-e aval, Ghazieh-e shekl-e dovom)

1978             SOLUTION NO 1 (Rah-e hal-e yek)

1977            TO PAINT episode from HOW TO MAKE USE OF OUR LEISURE TIME? (Az Oghat-e Faraghat-e Khod Chegouneh Estefadeh Konim?)

THE REPORT (Gozarech)

TRIBUTE TO THE TEACHERS (original title: Bozorgdasht-e mo’Allem)

1976             THE COLOURS (original title: Rang ha)

A SUIT FOR WEDDING (Lebassi baraye aroussi)

1975-1979 JAHAN-NAMA PALACE

1975             SO I CAN  (Man ham mitounam)

TWO SOLUTIONS FOR ONE PROBLEM (Dow rahe hal baraye yek massaleh)

1974             THE TRAVELER (Mossafer)

1973             THE EXPERIENCE (Tadjrobeh)

1972             THE BREAKTIME (Zang-e tafrih)

1970             THE BREAD AND ALLEY (Nan va koutcheh)

CAST

109 minutes

CAST

★★★★★

“A Modern Tokyo Story from the Iranian magician of Cinema…LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE is another miracle at close quarters.”
Robbie Collin, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

★★★★

“Iranian maestro Abbas Kiarostami heads to Tokyo for this multi-faceted jewel”

“Beautifully shot and filled with ominous tension, Like Someone In Love is compulsively watchable.”

Andrew Schenker, LITTLE WHITE LIES

★★★★

CRITIC'S CHOICE - TIME OUT

"Abbas Kiarostami tells a beguiling, mysterious tale..."

Ed Porter, SUNDAY TIMES

“An intriguing elliptical affair…like so much of Kiarostami’s work, the further away one gets, the more it seems to mean; his real skill, perhaps, is in making the profound appear lightweight.”

“LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE, is a must for followers of the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami…”

Kate Muir, THE TIMES

“I have to concede its immersive brilliance, especially in its first two scenes…”
Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN

“A tender and touching drama…terrifically moving.”

THE VIEW

“A luxuriant, purring poem of intertwined  lives...Kiarostami’s film bows out leaving us desperate for more.

Another miracle at close quarters."

Robbie Collin, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

★★★★

“So delicate...so elegant …engrossing”

Geoff Andrew, Time Out

'A WONDROUS FILM. Surpasses even the visual enticements of his previous feature, 'Certified Copy'.'

Richard Brody, The New Yorker

"Like Someone in Love achieves perfection"

David Erlich Reverse Shot

Dennis Lim, Artforum

Bret Easton Ellis (twitter)

‘The Great surprise of Cannes... thrilling’

Karina Longworth, Village Voice

‘A miracle...visual beauty in every instant…and of a delightful sophistication’

Jean-Francois Rauger, Le Monde

'EXQUISITELY MADE. An enchanting game of misfired passions and mistaken identities.'

Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

Eric Kohn, Indiewire

'A film of intense visual beauty. Its cinematography embodies the ambiguities in the story of an encounter between an elderly professor and a student moonlighting as a call girl."

Stephen Holden, The New York Times

'An elegant riddle of willful mistaken identity.'

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

'GORGEOUS, DEEPLY MYSTERIOUS AND UNSETTLING. Kiarostami's mastery is on immediate display. A bewitching and intriguingly ambiguous exploration of the roles we play with one another, and how nothing is ever quite what it appears to be. Kiarostami casts a spell that deeply resonates with one long after the film is over.'

Christopher Bourne, Twitch Film

'Kiarostami is masterful in his layering of space, using glass walls, mirrors, and, in one instance, the aligned side windows of parked cars to suggest a world of divisions, both between people and within them.'

J.R. Jones, The Chicago Reader

'An elegant, wholly original brainteaser certain to inspire debate.'

Ben Kenigsberg, Time Out Chicago

'Very tricky, very engaging.'

Stuart Klawans, The Nation

'An intoxicating series of sleights-of-hand. Kiarostami masterfully plays with expectation; clichés are upended in both character arcs and manipulation of visual perspective. The result is a film that riffs beautifully on the jazz standard that gives it its title.'

Ernest Hardy, LA Weekly

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