Like Someone in LoveSooner or later, the tangled web of lies we weave has a way of ensnaring ourselves within it. Akiko (Rin Takanashi) is a young college student moonlighting as a high-scale prostitute, dodging her possessive boyfriend, Noriaki (Ryô Kase), and not focusing on her schoolwork enough to really get ahead--the words "hot mess" comes to mind. One night, after her "manager", Hiroshi (Denden)--read: pimp, but one who looks more like a CPA--pressures her into paying a visit to an old acquaintance of his--to which Akiko acquiesces--she meets Takashi (Tadashi Okuno), a kindly old man who works as a translator (retired from teaching at Akiko's own university). Though they misunderstand one another's expectations a bit, they begin to form a bond, one founded on their mutual tendencies toward deceit.
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Like Someone in Love is almost a romance, a drama about two people in Japan who might be as different as night and day, but they meet through unusual circumstances all the same, and find themselves in need of one another, but for reasons which are different than what most would have been expected, given her manager Hiroshi's arrangement on Takashi's behalf. Takashi finds in Akiko a surrogate granddaughter, his own only represented by a photo on a table from her graduation. And maybe for Akiko, she finds in Takashi a substitute grandparent, after she leaves her own grandmother (Kaneko Kubota) at the train station all day--albeit with great sorrow--maybe because she cannot face revealing her own "mistakes" or other shortcomings to her. More subtle are their similarities with using deception to color their own world to their liking. Akiko's first words in the movie are, "I'm not lying to you", said to her boyfriend when she is, in fact, lying to him right then about what she's up to and where she is. It could be assumed that Akiko also lies to Takashi about her story of the "Training a Parrot" painting and how her uncle told her he painted it for her--or this might be yet another kind of lie, it's hard to tell them all apart. Like Someone in Love is a movie about false exteriors; even the first location in the film is a lie, a restaurant/club which is--in effect--a front for Hiroshi's prostitution ring. Similarly, even Takashi--the sweet old man--lies to Akiko when he claims to have made the shrimp broth for her, when he simply bought it at the restaurant downstairs, not to mention his misrepresentation to Noriaki as Akiko's grandfather. Ironically, the only character who seems so overly naive to the lies (unless you count his own self-deception regarding his feelings for Akiko) is Noriaki, who innocently believes Takashi is Akiko's grandfather...until a chance encounter with a former student reveals the lie and sends Noriaki on the warpath. But as Takashi observes, "when you know you're going to be lied to, it's best not to ask questions."
But sometimes, the lies can be more revealing than the truth--the glassy reflections can elucidate more than a mirror would. In fact, Like Someone in Love sports several shots of characters from behind the shiny windshields of automobiles and fuzzy reflections from TVs, blurring our perspective but also serving as a metaphor for undisclosed needs. Hiroshi prods and manipulates Akiko into avoiding going to see her grandmother at the train station, claiming it is better not to show up and just run off, and pushes her to keeping her "date" per her job requirements, and by recommending she dump her boyfriend. He claims this is not for the good of his business--which is a lie--but he is also right in his suggestions all the same. It is a while before we learn how dangerous Noriaki actually is, but with his experience, maybe Hiroshi sees more than we want to see from the overzealous, controlling mechanic. We are pained when Akiko listens to the voicemails from her grandmother who first shows up in Tokyo in the morning, but has spent all day at the station, waiting for her granddaughter to come pick her up. Each message is a knife in Akiko's heart, but she cannot bear to see her grandmother, maybe out of shame for her night work, her mediocrity at school, or something else. When Akiko does reach Takashi's apartment, she puts her game face on, and makes awkward jokes, flirts with him a bit, and makes several comments about how she looks like his wife and granddaughter, the girl in the painting, et cetera. Akiko claims that "not a day goes by that I'm not told that I look like someone". This line recalls the title of the movie--taken from the Ella Fitzgerald song Takashi plays as background music--and suggests that Akiko frequently finds herself forced to adopt masks to satisfy her clients, and maybe more people in her life. Perhaps she's at the end of her patience with living a lie, but not before she attempts to seduce the elderly man, who was probably only expecting a nice dinner date. Like Someone in Love wears several multi-cultural masks simultaneously, just as our "heroes" wear many masks of personality; even in the opening credits--with titles in French--the film is really a Japanese film, featuring American jazz by an Iranian director. Like the film, the pedigree defies easy classification, which works to its favor as it builds to a decidedly unpredictable--but not unlikely--conclusion. As the lies begin to unravel and the film builds to a powder keg of tension, the explosive end is all the more startling considering that the film has had little overt discourse about violence, but its shadow remains ubiquitous as a response to the unmasking of the lies, especially after we learn more about Noriaki.
Recommended for: Fans of refreshing drama which gives a wide berth to avoid contrived or predictable scenarios, and for fans of unlikely friendships blossoming in unpredictable ways. And for those who are adverse to any semblance of a denouement.
But sometimes, the lies can be more revealing than the truth--the glassy reflections can elucidate more than a mirror would. In fact, Like Someone in Love sports several shots of characters from behind the shiny windshields of automobiles and fuzzy reflections from TVs, blurring our perspective but also serving as a metaphor for undisclosed needs. Hiroshi prods and manipulates Akiko into avoiding going to see her grandmother at the train station, claiming it is better not to show up and just run off, and pushes her to keeping her "date" per her job requirements, and by recommending she dump her boyfriend. He claims this is not for the good of his business--which is a lie--but he is also right in his suggestions all the same. It is a while before we learn how dangerous Noriaki actually is, but with his experience, maybe Hiroshi sees more than we want to see from the overzealous, controlling mechanic. We are pained when Akiko listens to the voicemails from her grandmother who first shows up in Tokyo in the morning, but has spent all day at the station, waiting for her granddaughter to come pick her up. Each message is a knife in Akiko's heart, but she cannot bear to see her grandmother, maybe out of shame for her night work, her mediocrity at school, or something else. When Akiko does reach Takashi's apartment, she puts her game face on, and makes awkward jokes, flirts with him a bit, and makes several comments about how she looks like his wife and granddaughter, the girl in the painting, et cetera. Akiko claims that "not a day goes by that I'm not told that I look like someone". This line recalls the title of the movie--taken from the Ella Fitzgerald song Takashi plays as background music--and suggests that Akiko frequently finds herself forced to adopt masks to satisfy her clients, and maybe more people in her life. Perhaps she's at the end of her patience with living a lie, but not before she attempts to seduce the elderly man, who was probably only expecting a nice dinner date. Like Someone in Love wears several multi-cultural masks simultaneously, just as our "heroes" wear many masks of personality; even in the opening credits--with titles in French--the film is really a Japanese film, featuring American jazz by an Iranian director. Like the film, the pedigree defies easy classification, which works to its favor as it builds to a decidedly unpredictable--but not unlikely--conclusion. As the lies begin to unravel and the film builds to a powder keg of tension, the explosive end is all the more startling considering that the film has had little overt discourse about violence, but its shadow remains ubiquitous as a response to the unmasking of the lies, especially after we learn more about Noriaki.
Recommended for: Fans of refreshing drama which gives a wide berth to avoid contrived or predictable scenarios, and for fans of unlikely friendships blossoming in unpredictable ways. And for those who are adverse to any semblance of a denouement.