The late Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s 1997 Palme d’Or-winning film “Taste of Cherry” will be remade by renowned Argentine director Lisandro Alonso.
Additionally, Wagner Moura, a Brazilian actor, is set to star in Alonso’s movie after a successful year with “The Secret Agent.” The latter received numerous awards and positive reviews.
While specifics remain to be determined, the remake will most surely touch on the finality and existential longing of the classic. Alonso’s legacy has been built on subtly unconventional and intensely engrossing works (such as “Jauja” and “Eureka”).
Moura’s acting, in the same portrayal as Homayoun Ershadi in Kiarostami’s film, will probably be at the emotional core of this remake.
Audiences were left with more questions than answers by the original film’s renownedly mysterious plot, which revolved around a guy driving throughout Tehran, struggling with profound concerns about life and death, and searching for anyone to bury him alive.
Roger Ebert was infamously critical of Kiarostami’s film, giving it one star and calling it “excruciatingly boring.”
Although Moura appears to be hinting that it will shoot this year, production specifics have not yet been made public.
It takes courage to replicate “Taste of Cherry,” a unique movie that defies duplication by design and is based as much in obscurity and quiet as in narrative. Moura had screen presence to spare, but Ershadi possessed a quality Moura cannot counterfeit: an impression of a guy already anonymous from the world, a visage hollowed out by the cruel ravages of time.
