The very initial scene in Like Someone in Love begins with a voice off. We know that this is a way of expansion of the space. When it comes to Kiarostami, it also has a philosophical approach to the process of making a meaning out of something. In case of a voice off where we hear the speaker and see the listener, especially when two people are having a conversation, our attention is drawn to the listener. The listener, then, is the subject of the scene. S/he is the meaning maker. We read the scene through his/her reaction, a change on his/her face. The philosophical approach arises here. The director implies that the person who receives the information and processes it in the background of his/her own thoughts is the actual meaning maker. Not what is said is important but how it is perceived is what matters. At the end of the first scene, we see the images of Akiko and her boss juxtaposed to each other. At this moment, when the speaker and the listener come together, what is said is properly perceived and makes sense, so that Akiko decides to visit her customer, I think. This is that a-ha moment which is constructed by the contribution of both parties and intensified by such a juxtaposition.
On the other hand, the timing of the first scene is very linear. We realize that the timing of this scene is so-scaled to our daily life timing from the very initial. We literally wait for Akiko's return when she goes to the bathroom as if we are a guest in that bar waiting for her, which is not very conventional in mainstream movies, but frequent in Kiarostami's movies.
In the taxi while Akiko is going to the house of her customer, she listens to her voice messages from her grandmother. We never see the grandmother, yet we are aware of her presence from the conversation between Akiko and her boss even from very beginning. Here, she is being visible while invisible in a manner. Why do we have to hear her in the taxi, then? We know that she exists and the story that she wants to visit her granddaughter while she's in Tokyo, so why more of a proof? What I think is that the director is interfering here and now he is being visible while invisible. We know that this is the director's touch, so that here he is, as well. The space is expanded in two layers in the taxi scene. In one layer, Akiko is above the taxi driver with her being aware of the grandmother's complaints. In the other layer, we are above both of them. Linearity of the timing, however, is disrupted in the taxi through the voice messages that take us from the taxi to the earlier hours of the day.
There is one thing that is interesting here, though. The first 3 voice messages are from the grandmother. We perceive them through the face of Akiko. We are expected to observe her while she receives these messages. However, the voice messages of the grandmother are interrupted by two other messages that were sent by some irrelevant people. While she is listening to those messages, the camera turns its attention to the street and we no longer perceive the messages through the face of Akiko. That is why I consider those interruptions to be irrelevant and I think this is the touch of the director again where he is being visible through an invisible interference. From the last message till the other day, the linearity of the time is restored. We see all those turns on the road, waits on the red light, the other cars in the traffic and we hear the turn signal, the radio, so that we're restored to the reality of that moment. From now on, we wait for that slow process of Akiko's putting on her make up. The necessity that the driver had to call the customer to ask the address could not be skipped, even though this was an attempt in vain. That phone call from the friend of the customer had to be received. These are all the supporters of the linearity of the time anymore. The phone call, in addition to its contribution to perception of the time, being originated from a different location, is another example that disrupts the perception of the space for the audience.
The juxtaposition that we saw in the first scene is also repeated in the meeting scene of Akiko and her customer. The scene begins with a conversation where the audience interprets the flow of the dialog through the face of the listener and it ends with juxtaposition of the speaker and the listener on a different texture this time, through the screen. Here acting as a mirror, the screen allows the audience to physically expand the space. This scene is followed by the car scene where we see the characters from out of the front window of the car. Now, the director is compressing the space with this shooting technique, trapping the characters inside the car. The compression of the inside of the car is even more exaggerated by the shadows of the clouds and the outside world. As the clouds are large and the shadow of everything out of that small car is imposed on them, the characters are even more trapped in the car. It could be a sunny day with no clouds or no reflection. But would we have the same feeling of being contained in a squeezed space, then? I believe Kiarostami has an intended touch here, too making himself visible again. Another example that gives the sense of real-time timing is when the boyfriend and the customer are having a conversation in the car. Initially, we wait for the boyfriend to finish smoking, and we experience the hesitation that he goes through during that time, not skipped, a good detail. Then, a long conversation begins. This scene is very typical of Kiarostami who is known for making sophisticated conversations taking place in a car. While reading Kiarostami, we should always consider the audience since he believes that the final decision about his films is made on the minds of the spectator. In this car scene, the spectator is taken into the car being included to that trapped space. S/he is not a spectator anymore, but is a moderator of an argument. S/he is forced to perceive the argument, digest it, and not allowed to remain distant. This inevitable attraction towards the conversation is achieved through the shooting preferences of the director who placed the camera hence the spectator into the car. When Akiko returns after her exam is finished, the argument ends hence the moderator is kicked out of the car, also the camera, and becomes the spectator again. Until the end of that scene, whose remaining is not that philosophically sophisticated anymore, the spectator stays on the out of the car. Eventually, when they reach to the car service, the argument begins again, so that we are taken back into the car. In the following scene when the customer arrives home, there is a voice off which is not only used as a means of expansion of the space, but also used as a way of incorporating the audience. We do not see the owner of the voice in this scene, yet the customer answers her directly looking at the camera. Therefore, in a way, the spectator becomes the owner of the voice as if the customer was answering our questions. We are the owner of the voice with a cost of being put in a disturbing position since the neighbor's questions annoy the customer. Eventually, we feel distant from the neighbor even though we are her. In the consecutive scene, however, the audience is alienated from the scene, though having more empathy for the neighbor. Now, we see the actual owner of the voice, who is allowed to be seen from the behind a small window telling the story of her handicapping life. How she has to be attached to her brother is intensified by how she is attached to that window, how she is an object with which the main story has barrier in between. Now, she is trapped in that house, in her life which we perceive as a spectator observing her out of the window. We are now alienated from her, yet we feel more empathy towards her. Such spatial arrangement through a shooting technique allows the audience to have more intuition about even a random character and his/her own position as an audience. In Like Someone in Love, the space is expanded or compressed as the scene demands using different shooting techniques. The time is constructed in a linear manner in general. However, this linearity is sometimes disrupted by phone calls or voice messages. The spatial and temporal structure of Like Someone in Love is a complex one with layers and layers most of which might not be even covered in this analysis.
On the other hand, the timing of the first scene is very linear. We realize that the timing of this scene is so-scaled to our daily life timing from the very initial. We literally wait for Akiko's return when she goes to the bathroom as if we are a guest in that bar waiting for her, which is not very conventional in mainstream movies, but frequent in Kiarostami's movies.
In the taxi while Akiko is going to the house of her customer, she listens to her voice messages from her grandmother. We never see the grandmother, yet we are aware of her presence from the conversation between Akiko and her boss even from very beginning. Here, she is being visible while invisible in a manner. Why do we have to hear her in the taxi, then? We know that she exists and the story that she wants to visit her granddaughter while she's in Tokyo, so why more of a proof? What I think is that the director is interfering here and now he is being visible while invisible. We know that this is the director's touch, so that here he is, as well. The space is expanded in two layers in the taxi scene. In one layer, Akiko is above the taxi driver with her being aware of the grandmother's complaints. In the other layer, we are above both of them. Linearity of the timing, however, is disrupted in the taxi through the voice messages that take us from the taxi to the earlier hours of the day.
There is one thing that is interesting here, though. The first 3 voice messages are from the grandmother. We perceive them through the face of Akiko. We are expected to observe her while she receives these messages. However, the voice messages of the grandmother are interrupted by two other messages that were sent by some irrelevant people. While she is listening to those messages, the camera turns its attention to the street and we no longer perceive the messages through the face of Akiko. That is why I consider those interruptions to be irrelevant and I think this is the touch of the director again where he is being visible through an invisible interference. From the last message till the other day, the linearity of the time is restored. We see all those turns on the road, waits on the red light, the other cars in the traffic and we hear the turn signal, the radio, so that we're restored to the reality of that moment. From now on, we wait for that slow process of Akiko's putting on her make up. The necessity that the driver had to call the customer to ask the address could not be skipped, even though this was an attempt in vain. That phone call from the friend of the customer had to be received. These are all the supporters of the linearity of the time anymore. The phone call, in addition to its contribution to perception of the time, being originated from a different location, is another example that disrupts the perception of the space for the audience.
The juxtaposition that we saw in the first scene is also repeated in the meeting scene of Akiko and her customer. The scene begins with a conversation where the audience interprets the flow of the dialog through the face of the listener and it ends with juxtaposition of the speaker and the listener on a different texture this time, through the screen. Here acting as a mirror, the screen allows the audience to physically expand the space. This scene is followed by the car scene where we see the characters from out of the front window of the car. Now, the director is compressing the space with this shooting technique, trapping the characters inside the car. The compression of the inside of the car is even more exaggerated by the shadows of the clouds and the outside world. As the clouds are large and the shadow of everything out of that small car is imposed on them, the characters are even more trapped in the car. It could be a sunny day with no clouds or no reflection. But would we have the same feeling of being contained in a squeezed space, then? I believe Kiarostami has an intended touch here, too making himself visible again. Another example that gives the sense of real-time timing is when the boyfriend and the customer are having a conversation in the car. Initially, we wait for the boyfriend to finish smoking, and we experience the hesitation that he goes through during that time, not skipped, a good detail. Then, a long conversation begins. This scene is very typical of Kiarostami who is known for making sophisticated conversations taking place in a car. While reading Kiarostami, we should always consider the audience since he believes that the final decision about his films is made on the minds of the spectator. In this car scene, the spectator is taken into the car being included to that trapped space. S/he is not a spectator anymore, but is a moderator of an argument. S/he is forced to perceive the argument, digest it, and not allowed to remain distant. This inevitable attraction towards the conversation is achieved through the shooting preferences of the director who placed the camera hence the spectator into the car. When Akiko returns after her exam is finished, the argument ends hence the moderator is kicked out of the car, also the camera, and becomes the spectator again. Until the end of that scene, whose remaining is not that philosophically sophisticated anymore, the spectator stays on the out of the car. Eventually, when they reach to the car service, the argument begins again, so that we are taken back into the car. In the following scene when the customer arrives home, there is a voice off which is not only used as a means of expansion of the space, but also used as a way of incorporating the audience. We do not see the owner of the voice in this scene, yet the customer answers her directly looking at the camera. Therefore, in a way, the spectator becomes the owner of the voice as if the customer was answering our questions. We are the owner of the voice with a cost of being put in a disturbing position since the neighbor's questions annoy the customer. Eventually, we feel distant from the neighbor even though we are her. In the consecutive scene, however, the audience is alienated from the scene, though having more empathy for the neighbor. Now, we see the actual owner of the voice, who is allowed to be seen from the behind a small window telling the story of her handicapping life. How she has to be attached to her brother is intensified by how she is attached to that window, how she is an object with which the main story has barrier in between. Now, she is trapped in that house, in her life which we perceive as a spectator observing her out of the window. We are now alienated from her, yet we feel more empathy towards her. Such spatial arrangement through a shooting technique allows the audience to have more intuition about even a random character and his/her own position as an audience. In Like Someone in Love, the space is expanded or compressed as the scene demands using different shooting techniques. The time is constructed in a linear manner in general. However, this linearity is sometimes disrupted by phone calls or voice messages. The spatial and temporal structure of Like Someone in Love is a complex one with layers and layers most of which might not be even covered in this analysis.