About the movie "Like a River in Love"

Like Someone in Love, "Like Someone in Love", the mainland's translation is really expressive. It was already 3 am after watching this movie last night (one day last year). Abbas's movies always have a lot of silent long shots. People who are used to Hollywood blockbusters will find such movies boring. It is a bit like the blank space in Chinese painting. After all, what we can see is limited, and what we cannot see is left blank for people to imagine. There is nothing better in art than this. . The silence in Abbas's films is sometimes the warmth of the world, sometimes the naked cold violence, and sometimes the silence about life. Prior to this, the films directed by Abbas were mainly Iranian films. This "Like a River in Love" is the first Japanese film directed by Abbas. Before watching it, I was curious, how did the director who first made Iranian films and became famous in the West go to make a Japanese film?
After watching the whole movie, I feel that it has both Abbasid style and is very appropriate to the Japanese emotional society. At the beginning of the film, the heroine Akiko was on the phone in a noisy cafe. At first, I felt confused. The film did not explain any plot before. What impressed me was the artistic handling of the film. The surrounding noisy environment and Akiko's clear voice; the customers coming and going and Akiko sitting at the table; even the heroine Akiko's dress and behavior are very different from those around. In the comparison, the focus is on Akiko. Akiko struggles to weave a lie on the phone, and then she has to meet a guest (retired old professor) at the request of the store manager A Kuan. Only when I saw this did I realize that Akiko was a assisted dating girl, and her boyfriend was on the other end of the phone.
The film centers on Akiko, who is supporting her in order to study at the university, and unfolds the story based on her relationship with her boyfriend and a retired professor. The time span of the entire movie is not large (from the first night to the second day at noon). The plot is relatively simple, mainly expressing the emotions of the characters and the abyss-like real society behind the characters. For Akiko, in order to survive in Tokyo and continue to study, she was forced to go to aid dating, and she was under the psychological pressure of deceiving her family and her boyfriend, as well as the moral brokenness indirectly revealed in the film. For Mingzi, the purpose of reading is more to seek a kind of peace in life and mind. Akiko's boyfriend is a car repair shop owner who has not graduated from high school. He has pure love for Akiko, but this person is a bit macho. After having doubts about Akiko's daily life, he eagerly wants to marry Akiko so as not to cause trouble. But the old professor and Mingzi's boyfriend met at the entrance of the university, and the old man lied to him. However, the fragile lie was soon seen through. The exasperated boyfriend blocked the old man and Akiko in the old man's apartment. The old man ran around in a panic, and Akiko kept weeping. The film ended abruptly when the old professor was smashed by a brick, as always in the Abbas style.
The more than an hour-long film was quickly finished, but it made people unable to stop thinking. What is morality? What is morality in the face of loneliness, dignity, and freedom? Life is more and more like a broken web, but it probably doesn't need morality to mend it.

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