Like Someone in Love
IFC Films | Release Date: February 15, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
76
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
22
Mixed:
9
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinJun 21, 2013
Like Someone in Love, is another miracle at close quarters. Its subject is the impossibility of intimacy in the modern world: chewy stuff, to be sure, but Kiarostami explores it with a depth and delicacy that recalls the Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottFeb 14, 2013
Every shot — everything you see, and everything you don’t — imparts a disturbing and thrilling sense of discovery. Read full review
100
Village VoiceScott FoundasFeb 12, 2013
The movie's sense of immutable desire resonates well after the lights have come up. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternFeb 21, 2013
The greatest fascination is watching these three people when they're planted firmly inside the frame, talking at cross-purposes while trying to perceive one another in the reflected light of their needs and risky assumptions. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesSheri LindenFeb 14, 2013
From moment to moment the low-key intrigue threatens to slip into Hitchcock territory; when it does, it's not in the form of high-wire suspense but in a burst of understated playfulness. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleLeah ChurnerMar 20, 2013
The characters’ painful inability to connect only endears them to us, and somehow the film seems, like any human object of our affection might, more vivid and more knowable in its absence. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsMar 14, 2013
The film is so masterfully controlled, we feel like we’ve eavesdropped on something like life. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaMar 14, 2013
With an attention to the telling detail that one finds in a great short story, Kiarostami guides Takanashi and Okuno - and then Kase - through the mischievous and melancholy tale. It is quiet. It is lovely. And it will stay with you for a long time. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrMar 14, 2013
The new film is slender, and it plays obliquely with the style of the 20th-century Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu: simple shots of simple people revealing universal truths. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 28, 2013
It's also gorgeously acted by all, and while this may not be one of Kiarostami's finest, the craftsmanship nonetheless is so high, it makes everything else currently in theaters look slovenly. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesSteven BooneFeb 14, 2013
The film's craziest, most easily mocked character emerges as the one most fully alive. Old Kiarostami, master of paradoxes, is set in his ways, but his ways are never set. Read full review
88
New York PostFarran Smith NehmeFeb 13, 2013
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. This enigmatic study of identities built on social deceit offers more than easy answers ever could. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanFeb 13, 2013
The movie is playful and makes no easy moral judgments. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnFeb 8, 2013
While not his best work, Like Someone in Love is a nimble expression of Kiarostami's appeal: He remains one of the few directors capable of pulling you into a narrative and making you question its motives at every turn. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMar 14, 2013
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 full review
80
SlateDana StevensFeb 16, 2013
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 full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinFeb 16, 2013
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 full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Michael PosnerApr 11, 2013
A delicate pearl of a movie, Like Someone in Love is thus a meditative dance along the ambiguous borders of truth and illusion. What, Kiarostami seems to be asking, can we actually see? What can we definitively know? Far less than we think. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianMarc MohanMar 18, 2013
Like Someone in Love meanders with intention toward a bittersweet resolution, but then pulls the rug out from under you in a cruelly ambiguous shot. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerFeb 16, 2013
So free-floating that it floats away. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayFeb 13, 2013
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 full review
63
Slant MagazineJan 18, 2013
Plays out as a city-mouse rejoinder to the rustic, open-air daydream of Certified Copy, a snarl of thorny free jazz to that film's graceful aria. Read full review
60
EmpireDavid ParkinsonJun 17, 2013
Now practically an exile from his homeland, Kiarostami follows Certified Copy with another film-literate relationship drama with the enigmatic overtones of Hitchcock. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanFeb 15, 2013
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.” Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerJan 18, 2013
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 full review
58
Film.comWilliam GossFeb 26, 2013
A glimpse into how three different definitions of love can find themselves quietly at odds, the interactions between our three leads are always convincing if not always compelling. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoMar 8, 2013
Like Someone in Love is best suited to viewers already familiar with this extraordinary filmmaker's better work. Read full review
50
VarietyGuy LodgeJan 18, 2013
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 full review
42
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthFeb 8, 2013
There is a fine line between meeting an audience halfway and witholding enough without falling into self-indulgence, but Kiarostami can't make that balance here. Enigmatic and dull to a maddening degree, Like Someone In Love finds Kiarostami spinning his wheels. Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua RothkopfFeb 12, 2013
The director has made disappointing films before — a more generous word might be transitional — but never one so slight. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawJan 18, 2013
It is a beautifully shot, and very nicely acted beginning to something: but finally frustrating. Read full review
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