Abbas Kiarostami's Tokyo-set Like Someone in Love is a strange, unfinished spectacle – a minor work but well acted and made with eerily deliberate poise

Abbas Kiarostami's new film is a strange, unfinished spectacle whose ending simply looks amputated – a "missing reel" effect. It's the second time I have seen it since its premiere at Cannes last year, and I was by turns intrigued, startled and sceptical in exactly the same way, although I have to concede its immersive brilliance, especially in its first two scenes. A film-maker such as Kiarostami deserves many considerations, and one of them is a repeat viewing, though a lesser director might be suspected of just having thought of a great beginning and middle of a conventional story, but failed to come up with an ending.

Rin Takanashi is Akiko, a beautiful young student working as an escort; Tadashi Okuno is a lonely, elderly academic,...