First Hit: Slowly paced, little character development, and artistically shot.
This is a story of a young girl who is both a student and a hooker.
Watching her talk on the phone, in a bar, and trying to get out of a trick that her John was setting her up on, didn't work for me. This part of the story just wasn’t believable to me.
The part that did work was her boyfriend’s extreme worry and attempts to control his beautiful girlfriend. When he says to the old man, I’ve got to do everything I can to keep her because I could never get someone like her again if I lost her. The man her John wants to set her up with is a very old professor, who wants to talk with her and fix her a meal.
We’ve no history about this man and why he wants to meet up with this young girl. What we do know is that he is protective and wants to help her.
This film is very slow paced and scenes take a long time to play out. The ending is quite startling and leaves you hanging.
Rin Takanashi as Akiko (the whore) is quiet and very reserved in this role and her lips are extraordinary. Tadashi Okuno as Takashi (the old man) is sweet however we never know much about him and why he’s interested in her. Abbas Kiarostami wrote and directed this film, with well-crafted sets, but it was very very slow in unfolding.
Overall: Until Kiarostami sees how his slow moving films can try the patience of an audience, his commercial success will be fleeting.