Like Someone in Love 2012

Karina Longworth, L.A. Weekly: I was pleasantly disoriented throughout, and I thought the film's final moment was thrilling. Read more

Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: ... it ratchets up to one of the most galvanic and disturbing visions Kiarostami has ever concocted Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: Every shot - everything you see, and everything you don't - imparts a disturbing and thrilling sense of discovery. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: There is love, the movie tells us, then there is love. Read more

Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times: A Rorschach test of our own responses to the intimate drama unfolding before us. Read more

Mike D'Angelo, AV Club: I know there's something happening here, but I don't know what it is. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: Is this the stuff of gripping drama? Not at all. But like nearly all of Kiarostami's films, it's the stuff of good conversation. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: "Like Someone in Love" is not a complicated story, but in Kiarostami's telling, it is a rich one, and a rewarding one, too. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The latest small, perplexing masterpiece from the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, who in recent years has chosen the path of a world director. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: 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. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Despite its visual felicities, Like Someone in Love is so free-floating that it floats away. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Maybe it all serves a purpose, but a movie about empty people doesn't necessarily have to feel empty itself. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: The movie is playful and makes no easy moral judgments. Read more

William Goss, Film.com: Impeccably acted, infused with tremendous empathy for its three leads, and yet not without stretches of deliberate tedium... Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Like Someone in Love has rather simple, sentimental, melodramatic underpinnings, but the vantage changes everything. It opens up this world - and the next. It's an enthralling journey. Read more

Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter: The film constantly toys with the expectations of both its characters and the audience, transforming a classic three-way tale of mistaken identities into something much more mysterious and troubling. Read more

Sheri Linden, Los Angeles Times: Kiarostami embarks on a typically indirect but never rambling path in "Like Someone in Love," crafting an elegant mystery that resonates beyond its final, jolting moment. Read more

Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic: Like Someone in Love is directed imaginatively, is impressively acted, and is quite disappointing -- not even successful in its own way. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Masterful filmmaking bridges a few gaps in the narrative. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: The many trips through Tokyo, filmed incisively from moving vehicles, infuse the rich texture of the city with a startling emotional intensity and a sense of teeming ambient drama ... Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: The film deepens a style Kiarostami has been refining for years. Characters ride in the backs of cars, sealed off from the city and yet constantly moving. Reflections in windows and mirrors both bring characters together and keep them apart. Read more

Mark Jenkins, NPR: Like Someone in Love boasts gently insightful moments, but sometimes Kiarostami just seems like a wide-eyed tourist in unbuttoned Tokyo, the anti-Tehran. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: The greatest pleasure comes from watching Okuno, a stage actor who wholly embraces the biggest film role of his 81 years. Read more

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: If "Like Someone in Love" frustrates, it also has ineffable grace in the framing of Kiarostami's long, languid shots, the changes he captures in the light, and the way the actors' smallest movements become fascinating. Read more

Steven Boone, Chicago Sun-Times: Kiarostami presents indefinite people with indefinite motivations and desires. Read more

Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle: There are some limited rewards in seeing the consequences and complexities that result from the characters' deceptions and assumed roles, but in the end the film is unsatisfying. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Like Someone in Love is a movie that never quite lets you through to the other side of the glass, but it's dazzling to watch whatever drifts by on the surface. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: I came away from it as if I had spent an evening contemplating a handsome abstract canvas. I can't explain it to you, exactly, but I found it soothing. Read more

Jon Frosch, The Atlantic: It lacks the dark streak of unpredictability that made Certified Copy a slightly richer viewing experience. Still, the film is never less than pleasing to watch. Read more

Michael Posner, Globe and Mail: Making only his second film outside of his native Iran, Kiarostami undercuts the rigid protocols of polite Japanese society with intimations of violence. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Kiarostami's apparent simplicity masks serious complexity. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Kiarostami is once again taking an intriguingly oblique approach to his material. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: The director has made disappointing films before-a more generous word might be transitional-but never one so slight. Read more

Guy Lodge, Variety: As it turns out, it's the first, not the last, word of the title that's key to this droll, elegant but faintly trying study in emotional artifice. Read more

Scott Foundas, Village Voice: A sly, teasing riff on the heart's irrational stirrings. Read more