Kiarostami travelled even further afield than Tuscany for what would ultimately come to be his final feature film, a mysteriously beautiful romantic drama filmed entirely in Japan. The film revolves around the brief encounter between an elderly professor (played by 81-year-old stage actor Tadashi Okuno in his first film role) and Akiko (Rin Takanashi), a sociology student, who sells herself to help pay for her studies. The young woman finds her latest client less interested in sex than in making her a meal, talking, and playing Ella Fitzgerald records. In typical Kiarostami fashion, however, nothing is quite as it seems on the surface.

Notes by David O’Mahony