Taste of Cherry

Taste of Cherry is a 1997 Iranian film, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. This is a deliberate, slowly-paced story about a man who drives around the countryside trying to hire a man to do a delicate task for him. I honestly loved this film and will re-watch it. I found it revelatory.

via Youtube:

Senses of Cinema begins its consideration with this:

[Director] Abbas Kiarostami’s cinema has long been a ‘humanitarian’ one, but not in the often condescending, conventional sense of the word. His cinema carries the utmost respect for an audience as a collection of thinking, intellectualizing individuals: never does he resort to devices intended to blatantly arouse the audience’s emotions, edit didactically to make a political point, or instruct via an obvious narrative structure. His sparse narrative economy comprised of spaces and ellipsis thread together episodes and present experiences that require the audience to make a leap of imagination or understanding.

FilmReference.com says, Taste of Cherry, [director] Kiarostami's eloquent meditation on life and death, is a sublime masterpiece." EW gives it an A and calls it "outstanding".

Roger Ebert gives it one pitiful, lonely star and an unfavorable review. Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 83%.