It's sad when my birthday gift to myself is FORCING myself to leave work after "only" working a 10 hour day instead of my typical 12.
ANYWAY, YAY IT'S MY BIRTHDAY SO HERE!!! HAVE A REVIEW OF A FILM I VERY MUCH ENJOY!!!
Tampopo
1985
Director: Juzo Itami
Starring: Tsutomu Yamazaki, Nobuko
Miyamoto, Ken Watanabe
“So,
you’re watching a movie too? What are
you eating?”
A
guilty pleasure show for both me and my husband is Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on the Food
Network. We call it food porn because
everything looks so damn good, and it makes both of us really hungry for really
greasy food. But when it comes to true
food porn, I don’t think anything can really surpass Tampopo, a film that is
quite possibly the best foodie movie I’ve ever seen. A little bit of everything and never taking
itself terribly seriously, Tampopo is nothing if not exuberant
about the joy of eating.
Tampopo
(Miyamoto) is a widowed young mother running the noodle shop her husband left
her, but not running it very well. Toro
(Yamazaki) is a truck driver who wears fedoras and is accompanied by sidekick
Gun (a young Watanabe). When Toro and
Gun stop by Tampopo’s place, taste her mediocre noodles, save her son from
bullies, and beat up the bad guys infesting her restaurant, she begs them to
stay to teach her, train her, and help her become the best ramen noodle shop
around.
This
central story, while not the only focus of the film, is a fascinating journey
of doing one thing, and doing it well. I
can only think of the word “joy” to describe watching Tampopo transform her
noodle shop. It’s such a simple premise,
but it works. Slowly, step by step, Goro
guides Tampopo through the process of becoming a great chef. It’s just fun, watching them find a broth
expert, then a noodle expert, then an interior design expert. Everything gets a makeover, including Tampopo
herself, and it gives the movie focus, and if there is some skewering of
Japanese and American customs along the way, so much the better. It’s honestly difficult to tell at certain
points if Tampopo is presenting its story as tongue-in-cheek, or if it
really is just blushingly sincere, and quite frankly, the film can be read
either way. For me personally, however,
despite my rampant cynicism in other areas of my life, I choose to read
Tampopo’s tale as one of straightforward zeal.
When Tampopo triumphantly serves her excellent ramen at the end of the
film, the story has been building so subtly but so insistently that I find
myself wanting to stand up and cheer.
Over a bowl of noodles. There is
nothing cynical, to me, in her final success, and I am with her every step of
the way.
And
yet, if that’s all you think Tampopo is, you’re missing out. The above is merely the main storyline, the
connective thread from start to finish, but there’s so much more here. There are tangential vignettes, comedy
spoofs, and montage sequences that hold everything together, creating some
bizarrely humorous yet incredibly endearing whole. A group of Japanese women are taking lessons
on how to eat Italian spaghetti and fail miserably at not slurping the
noodles. A young businessman thoroughly
outclasses his older colleagues at French restaurant. A woman on her death bed rises in order to prepare
dinner for her family (it sounds sad, but it’s actually laugh out loud funny,
especially when Dad tells the kids to “eat it while it’s still hot!” right
after Mom dropped dead). And then there
is piece de resistance, the actual food porn.
I wasn’t kidding with my opening; there is a couple dressed in white
that is continually cut back to that include food thoroughly in their love
play. Seriously, this part of Tampopo
is food porn. But it’s never too serious
or too melodramatic or even too vulgar; all these odd little asides from the
main story help to create a mood of charm and whimsy, that key atmosphere of
irreverent and joyous fun that makes Tampopo so special.
Tampopo runs fast and thick with movie
references, ranging from the obvious (a Rocky training session even
involving the gray sweat suit) to the more subtle (I swear, when a “vagabond”
makes a rice omelet for Tampopo’s son, it’s meant to mimic Charlie
Chaplin). Not what you were expecting
from a movie about food? Me neither, but
that’s one of the wonderful things about Tampopo. Goro wears a fedora nearly identical to
Indiana Jones’, and in a dream sequence, Tampopo herself is in full-on American
Western garb as the film takes on a decidedly “Gunfight at the OK Corral,” John
Ford feeling. The Western themes, in
particular, are laced throughout the entire film and are easily the most
recognizable to American audiences. So
what if, ten minutes later from the aforementioned dream sequence, Tampopo
then swings wildly away by referencing the heartbreaking final scene from
Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp? Don’t
overthink it. Tampopo is all about food
and reverence for food, but only slightly below food is a reverence for
cinema.
All
of this makes Tampopo wonderful, but what really sets it over the edge is how
the film becomes sneakily emotional in its climax. Yes, there are hints of a romance between
Tampopo and Goro throughout the film, but in the finale, when she finally
reopens her wonderful new shop and serves her wonderful new ramen to hordes of
people who appear as if from nowhere, the movie becomes sadly wistful. Goro gazes at Tampopo and sees… what? Regret?
Pride? A lost love? A job well done? The answer is all of these things, but this
is a scene thick with unsaid emotion. There was definitely a lump in my throat and
my eyes got a little misty.
Again,
all in a movie about noodles.
With
a soundtrack taken mostly from Mahler’s First Symphony (an interesting
East-meets-West comment right there) that is as whimsical yet powerful as the
film itself, you really can’t go wrong with Tampopo. It is a joyous celebration of food, life, and
cinema, all blended together, never getting too serious, but getting just
serious enough. My only warning is that
you will be absolutely dying for a bowl of good quality ramen by the end of the
film.
Arbitrary
Rating: 9.5/10
