Taste of Cherry uses the cinema to figure out if life is worth living, a hard question that seems superficial because so many films so easily reach the conclusion that it is. They show us a wedding, a happy family, a good job, a lottery winner. They indulge our desire to see things work out for the best. Kiarostami does none of that. Taste of Cherry excludes, cutting away plot and backstory, two things that can bog down a film. It goes in circles and meanders, the concision of its ninety-nine minutes becoming clear only in retrospect. It is meant to conceal, even to frustrate. Instead of tying the story up neatly, its ending does something else.