Like Someone in LoveMovies like Like Someone in Love
- Key Features:
- Intergenerational relationship, Tokyo, Ambiguity, Misunderstanding, Unconventional relationship, Character study, Cultural differences, Loneliness, Identity, Complex relationships, Drama
- Tone:
- restrained, poetic, serious
- Target Audience:
- Fans of slow-burn dramas, Viewers interested in character studies, Those who appreciate subtle and ambiguous narratives, Arthouse film enthusiasts
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Confusion
Like Someone in Love

An old man and a young woman meet in Tokyo. She knows nothing about him, he thinks he knows her. He welcomes her into his home, she offers him her body. But the web that is woven between them in the space of twenty four hours bears no relation to the circumstances of their encounter.
Like Someone in Love
Asako lives in Osaka. She falls in love with Baku, a free-spirit. One day, Baku suddenly disappears. Two years later, Asako now lives in Tokyo and meets Ryohei. He looks just like Baku, but has a completely different personality.

The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

A young Tokyo salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair.

An elderly couple journey to Tokyo to visit their grown children, only to find them preoccupied and self-involved.

When the actor in a scene for his film Life And Nothing More… has to quit, a film director casts another man for the part. However, complications arise since the man and the woman who was cast for the scene know each other.

Taeko and her husband, Jirō, are living a peaceful existence with her young son, Keita, when a tragic accident brings the boy's long-lost father, Park, back into her life. To cope with the pain and guilt, Taeko throws herself into helping this deaf and homeless man.

The arranged marriage between a capricious woman from Tokyo high society and a quiet and rustic man is tested by a marital crisis.

Two strangers have dropped their kids off at a pickup area for a children's camp in Helsinki, Finland. A spark of mutual interest is ignited between the man and woman.

Akira works as a lawyer. One day, he meets with his former client Rie, who asks Akira to perform a background check on her late husband Daisuke.

After a bad breakup, a college-aged Parisian moves into her father's flat only to discover that he is living with his new girlfriend - a young woman her age.

A reclusive elderly poet feels the fire of his youth when gamine schoolgirl Eun-gyo enters his life, to the chagrin of the old man's assistant.

The story follows the social intercourse between a cameraman, Masaya, with a visual impairment, and Misako who disconnects from the world.

A debt collector strikes a deal with a debt-ridden woman struggling to care for her ailing father: he will take care of her bills if she agrees to date him.

Takumi and his six-year-old son, Yuji, haven't come to terms with their wife and mother's death. One day, they meet a woman with an uncanny resemblance to her sheltering from the rain near their home.

A middle-aged tailor and his wife find their relationship challenged by the arrival of a handsome new apprentice.

Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman driven by money. He learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must make a life-changing decision and choose his true son or the boy he raised as his own.

How much do we really know about ourselves when we make a decision? What if there are multiple versions of our I within us, each with something to say?

Akira Tachibana is a soft-spoken high school student who used to be a part of the track and field club. Working part-time at a restaurant, she finds herself inexplicably falling in love with her manager, a divorced 45-year-old man.

It tells the story of Marcos and Ana, who have been married for more than 25 years, but enter into an existential crisis that leads them to separate. The life of singles seems fascinating and exciting at first, but soon it also becomes monotonous for her and nightmarish for him.

An unlikely friendship forms between 21 year-old Jane and the elderly Sadie after Jane discovers a hidden stash of money inside an object at Sadie's yard sale.

In 1987 Madrid, the unexpected encounter between a seasoned journalist and a young student leads to a profound exploration of love, desire, politics, power, and discovery of each other.

In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.

In a Tokyo love hotel district, a woman is found dead in a derelict apartment. As police investigate, a romance novelist's wife lives a life that seems simply a daily repetition without romance. To break away from the loveless monotony, she follows her desires and becomes a nude model enacting sex in front of a camera. Soon, she meets a mentor and begins selling her body to strangers, while at home, she hides behind the façade that she's still the doting wife she's supposed to be.

An idealistic attractive young couple acquires a stunning, life-like robot for guilt free help, but as the three grow closer, their perception of humanity will be altered forever.

A tragedy strikes a young woman's life without warning or reason. She continues living while searching for meaning in a lonely world.

Jane Goodale has everything going for her. She's a producer on a popular daytime talk show, and is in a hot romance with the show's dashing executive producer Ray. But when the relationship goes terribly awry, Jane begins an extensive study of the male animal, including her womanizing roommate Eddie. Jane puts her studies and romantic misadventure to use as a pseudonymous sex columnist -- and becomes a sensation.

In the immense city of Tokyo, the darkness of the afterlife lures some of its inhabitants who are desperately trying to escape the sadness and isolation of the modern world.

Elegant, retired architect Shauna (70) crosses paths with Pierre, a happily married doctor in his 40s, who first made an impression on her in a brief meeting 15 years previously. Both are quite troubled to meet again and begin an affair. While Pierre’s family life is soon turned upside down, Shauna struggles with feelings she thought belonged to the past.

19-year-old Tomek whiles away his lonely life by spying on his opposite neighbour Magda through binoculars. She's an artist in her mid-thirties, and appears to have everything - not least a constant stream of men at her beck and call. But when the two finally meet, they discover that they have a lot more in common than appeared at first sight...

A lonely, chain-smoking office lady in Tokyo falls for her teacher when she decides to take English lessons. When her teacher disappears, she sets out on a journey to find him.

Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.

In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee, an American ex-pat in his late forties, leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton, a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.

Olga and Maks are 15 years away. She is a successful woman with an established position, the mother of an adult daughter, he is a handsome young man who enjoys his life in a handful and lives only in the moment. It might seem that these two different worlds will never meet, and yet fate put them in the way.

A lonely university student develops a romance with a beautiful interesting woman, who turns out to be a cyborg from the future.

Hiroko attends the memorial service of her fiancé, Itsuki Fujii, who died in a mountain-climbing incident. Although Itsuki's mother says that their old house is gone, Hiroko records the address listed under his name in his yearbook and sends him a letter. Surprisingly, she receives a reply, and discovers it came from his old classmate, a girl who also happens to be called Itsuki Fujii.

A reclusive illustrator falls in love with a young woman who addictively shops for clothing.

A married woman with a lovely daughter lives a carefree life, until she meets her ex-lover at a friend’s wedding. They haven’t seen each other in ten years, but they begin an affair.

A recently widowed American begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.

A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.

While a South Korean man wanders the city in search of the woman he just broke up with, she successively meets and flirts with two men who claim to have met her before.

Kostis is a 40-year-old doctor that finds himself in the small island of Antiparos, in order to take over the local clinic. His whole life and routine will turn upside down when he meets an international group of young and beautiful tourists and he falls in love with Anna, a 19-year-old goddess.

A young woman struggling to stay on top of everything in her life meets a married publisher and begins an affair with him.

Mathias Gold is a down-on-his-luck New Yorker who inherits a Parisian apartment from his estranged father. But when he arrives in France to sell the vast domicile, he's shocked to discover a live-in tenant who is not prepared to budge. His apartment is a viager—an ancient French real estate system with complex rules pertaining to its resale—and the feisty Englishwoman Mathilde Girard, who has lived in the apartment with her daughter Chloé for many years, can by contract collect monthly payments from Mathias until her death.

A Japanophile young Belgian woman in Tokyo falls into a whirlwind romance with a Francophile Japanese student, in this charming and tender tale of young love and cultural discovery.

Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment: May, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-kang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.

Maurice is an aging veteran actor who becomes taken with Jessie, the grandniece of his closest friend. When Maurice tries to soften the petulant and provincial young girl with the benefit of his wisdom and London culture, their give-and-take surprises both Maurice and Jessie as they discover what they don't know about themselves.

Sparks fly after Ali and Ava meet through their shared affection for Sofia, the child of Ali’s tenants whom Ava teaches. Ali finds comfort in Ava’s warmth and kindness while Ava finds Ali’s complexity and humour irresistible. As the pair begin to form a deep connection they have to find a way to keep their newfound passion from being overshadowed by the stresses and struggles of their separate lives and histories.

Handsome but backward gardener Tim Melville has a new woman in his life. She is Mary, his widowed employer, a woman who had given up on love until she had found Tim. At first they are friends. But soon they become lovers, as Mary, drawn to Tim's innocence and magnetism, begins to teach him all about life - and love.

Abandoned after coming out, Shun befriends Mio just before he has to move. Years later, Mio returns with a confession. How will Shun feel?

The relationship between a middle-aged man and the elderly woman who has been the family's helper for sixty years.

Searching for escape in Tokyo's back alleys, a haunted English teacher explores love and lust with a dashing Yakuza, as their tumultuous affair takes her on a journey through the city's dive bars and three-hour love hotels.

A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens' boarding school. Slowly, they reveal themselves to each other, finding that they have something deeply in common.

A career driven professional from Manhattan is wooed by a young painter, who also happens to be the son of her psychoanalyst.

On a cold Monday morning, a group of counselors clock in at an old-fashioned social services office. Their task is to interview the recently deceased, record their personal details, then, over the course of the week, assist them in choosing a single memory to keep for eternity.

The story of an encounter between a bourgeois man and a poor woman, because their teenage children fall in love.

At an idyllic writers retreat in Morocco, a newly single novelist finds an unexpected connection with a younger man who's reevaluating his life choices.

Love is a business at Family Romance, a company that rents human stand-ins for any occasion. Founder Yuichi Ishii helps make his clients’ dreams come true. But when the mother of 12-year-old Mahiro hires Ishii to impersonate her missing father, the line between acting and reality threatens to blur.

Seven years after the death of his wife, widower Shigeharu seeks advice on how to find a new wife from a colleague. Taking advantage of their position as a film company, they stage an audition. Interviewing a series of women, Shigeharu is enchanted by the quiet Asami. But soon things take a twisted turn as Asami isn’t what she seems to be.

A widowed professor living in Paris develops a special relationship with a younger French woman.

A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.

Rei helps the woman she's been in love with for years escape her abusive husband. While on the run, their feelings for each other catch fire.

Oki, a film student, gets involved in two relationships as she navigates the advances of a fellow student and grapples with her feelings for her much older professor.

A young man drops out of university and goes to the police. He's done nothing wrong he just wants a job. A particular job. Playing the victim in murder reconstructions. Maybe by getting close to death he can manage to cheat on his own.

Real-life young couple Wim and Floor spend an afternoon in the sunwashed rooms of a crumbling home in Belgium. In a unique twist, this artistic erotic documentary is edited in nearly real-time. In the slowness, we get the build, the sweetness, and the sexiness. Forget about fingersnapping fast editing. Slow is where it’s at.

One night in Tokyo, Leo, a young boxer, meets his first love, Monica, an imprisoned sex worker. Caught up in a drug-smuggling scheme, they find themselves pursued by a corrupt cop, a yakuza, his nemesis, and a female assassin.

A middle-aged woman leaves her partner and drifts back to her ex-husband, while the lives of her middle class friends intersect with her own.

A man is broken hearted at the loss of his lover, then later visits the same pain on the next woman with whom he becomes involved.

Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring.

Emmi Kurowski, a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali. Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi's family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future.

Two introverted people find out by pure chance that they share the same dream every night. They are puzzled, incredulous, a bit frightened. As they hesitantly accept this strange coincidence, they try to recreate in broad daylight what happens in their dream.

Ryo Morinaka is a university student and works part-time at a bar. He is bored with his daily life and exists in a state of torpor. One day, his friend Shinya Tajima brings the owner of a host bar over to the place where Ryo Morinaka works. Shizuka Mido is the owner of the host bar. Soon, Ryo Morinaka begins to work for Shizuka Mido at the members only host bar. He feels embarrassment initially, but he fulfills the desires of women and develops a sense of purpose.

A depressed man moves back in with his parents following a recent heartbreak and finds himself with two women.

Lake is in a straight relationship with Desiree but finds himself becoming attracted to men at the pool. When he cannot control his desires any longer, he starts working at an adult home and begins a relationship with a much, much older man.

A submissive hooker goes about her trade, suffering abuse at the hands of Japanese salarymen and Yakuza types. She's unhappy about her work, and is apparently trying to find some sort of appeasement for the fact that her lover has married.

A man and a woman are brought together by chance for several months. He is younger than she is, married, Russian, officially a diplomat stationed in Paris. She is a beautiful teacher and researcher, with her feet firmly on the ground. The film follows the evolution of their love, from the beginning to end.

After the earthquake of Guilan, a film director and his son travel to the devastated area to search for the actors from the movie the director made there a few years previously. In their search, they see how people who have lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.

Armando, a 50 year man, seeks young men in Caracas and pays them just for company. One day he meets Elder, a 17 years boy that is the leader of a criminal gang, and that meeting changes their lives forever.

Toru recalls his life in the 1960s, when his friend Kizuki killed himself and he grew close to Naoko, Kizuki's girlfriend, and another woman, the outgoing, lively Midori.

An uptight documentary filmmaker and his wife find their lives loosened up a bit after befriending a free-spirited younger couple.

Gloria is a 58-year-old divorcée. Her children have all left home but she has no desire to spend her days and nights alone. Determined to defy old age and loneliness, she rushes headlong into a whirl of singles’ parties on the hunt for instant gratification – which only leads to repeated disappointment and enduring emptiness. But when Gloria meets Rodolfo, an ex-naval officer seven years her senior, she begins to imagine the possibility of a permanent relationship.

A film where anything can happen - the hero and the heroine changes their faces, age, look, names, and so on. The only same thing: The love between man and woman... in an archetypical love story cut from 500 classics from all around the world.

A restaurant opens at midnight. Both the menu offerings and personality of the owner draw a series of flawed patrons including Tamako, whose boyfriend has passed away, live-in worker Michiru, and ruckus-raising Kenzo.

The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other.

A British college student falls for an American student, only to be separated from him when she's banned from the U.S. after overstaying her visa.

A middle-aged Tehranian man, Mr. Badii is intent on killing himself and seeks someone to bury him after his demise. Driving around the city, the seemingly well-to-do Badii meets with numerous people, including a Muslim student, asking them to take on the job, but initially he has little luck. Eventually, Badii finds a man who is up for the task because he needs the money, but his new associate soon tries to talk him out of committing suicide.

An affluent, middle-aged couple's uneventful lives are forever changed when they move into an isolated house in the country and befriend an odd, younger couple.

A man, Milan steps off a train, into a small French village. As he waits for the day when he will rob the town bank, he runs into an old retired poetry teacher named M. Manesquier. The two men strike up a strange friendship and explore the road not taken, each wanting to live the other's life.

On a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Turkish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. The revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.

Théo and Hugo meet in a club and form an immediate bond. Once the desire and elation of this first moment has passed, the two young men, now sober, wander through the empty streets of nocturnal Paris, having to confront the love they sense blossoming between them.

An attention-craving mother nearing 50, unemployed and living with her pregnant daughter and son-in-law, suddenly finds herself with child, too...

A struggling street photographer, pressured to marry by his grandmother, convinces a shy stranger to pose as his fiancée. The pair develops a connection that transforms them in ways that they could not expect.

On the beaches of Kenya they’re known as "Sugar Mamas" —European women who seek out African boys selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian and mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels to this vacation paradise, moving from beach to beach.

A grandmother has a passionate affair with a man half her age, who is also sleeping with her daughter.

On Manhattan's gilded Upper East Side, a young gay painter is torn between an obsession with his infamous best friend and a promising new romance with an older foreign pianist.

In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.

Set in the port town of Dover in the South-East of England, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.

Deep in the woods, a lost hiker stumbles upon the cabin of an erratic and reclusive old man. What starts off as cordial conversation soon turns dangerous as it becomes clear that one or both of them might be hiding a terrifying secret.

