A Taste of Cherry
As a filmmaker from Iran, Abbas Kiarostami was once denied a visitor’s permit to the U.S. But American critics had long praised his films (Life and Nothing More, Through the Olive Trees) and those of his countrymen, who had made Iran the leading new national cinema of the ’90s. A Taste of Cherry, which tied with Shohei Imamura’s The Eelfor the Palme d’Or, is a darkly comic tale about a man who is contemplating suicide and has to audition assistants for the job. For the top prize it beat out films by esteemed directors Marco Bellocchio, Michael Haneke and Ang Lee — all of them back in the competition this year.
