Ta'm e guilass (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)

A mid-period work from the prolific Iranian director, Taste of Cherry is a minimalist piece in which we follow a man driving around Tehran trying to get one of his hitchhiking passengers to agree to bury him in the event of his suicide. Some are completely freaked out by the notion, while others attempt to persuade him to abandon the attempt on religious or philosophical grounds. It's a small but interesting study of human nature, with insistently repetitious dialogue reminiscent of a Mamet screenplay, somewhat undermined by the opaqueness of the protagonist as no explanation is ever given for his actions beyond the simple conviction that life is no longer worth living, and therefore any wider parallels that might be drawn also remain unrealised.

5/10