Indie Roundup: ‘Like Someone In Love’

Abbas Kiarostami helped put Iranian cinema on the map back in the ’80s and ’90s with movies such as festival faves “Close Up,” “A Taste of Cherries,” and “The Wind Will Carry Us.” For the past couple of years, however, Kiarostami has been making movies abroad, no doubt because of the increasingly political environment in his native country. In 2010, he released “Certified Copy,” starring Juliette Binoche and set in the Tuscan countryside. That movie — about marriage, identity, and authenticity — was beautiful and elusive, leaving many critics baffled and enraptured.

Kiarostami mines similar thematic territory in his follow-up movie “Like Someone in Love,” but it’s set in Tokyo with an all-Japanese cast. The result is very odd but strangely satisfying.