Stars: Tsutomu Yamazaki, Nobuko Miyamoto, Ken Watanabe, Rikiya Yasuoka | Written and Directed by Juzo Itami
The life and death of actor and director Juzo Itami is an incredible story in itself (he was allegedly killed by the Yakuza following his gangster movie Minbo), but he was no slouch in putting bizarre stories on the silver screen, either. His sophomore directorial effort, Tampopo (literally, “Dandelion”), was made in 1985 and is probably his best-known film.
A pair of truckers – youngster Gun (Ken Watanabe) and elder Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki) – chat about ramen (a noodle-based Japanese dish), so decide to stop at a roadside restaurant to satisfy themselves. The place belongs to a widow named Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto, Itami’s wife). Desperate to improve her business, she implores the straight-talking Goro to help her turn it into the best restaurant in town.
While Goro and Tampopo go about researching the best recipes and employing...
The life and death of actor and director Juzo Itami is an incredible story in itself (he was allegedly killed by the Yakuza following his gangster movie Minbo), but he was no slouch in putting bizarre stories on the silver screen, either. His sophomore directorial effort, Tampopo (literally, “Dandelion”), was made in 1985 and is probably his best-known film.
A pair of truckers – youngster Gun (Ken Watanabe) and elder Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki) – chat about ramen (a noodle-based Japanese dish), so decide to stop at a roadside restaurant to satisfy themselves. The place belongs to a widow named Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto, Itami’s wife). Desperate to improve her business, she implores the straight-talking Goro to help her turn it into the best restaurant in town.
While Goro and Tampopo go about researching the best recipes and employing...
- 5/1/2017
- by Rupert Harvey
- Nerdly
Wikipedia suggests the term “food porn” was coined by feminist critic Rosalind Coward in her 1984 book Female Desire, one year before the film to which it is still best applicable was released. Juzo Itami’s Tampopo is not solely made up of the sort of Instagram-ready, ornate cuisines with which we are inundated with today. Food is often mishandled, tossed off, or even not shown at all, even when it is the subject of the scene (which it often is). But the film expresses best – to borrow the title of another famous book – the joy of cooking, of eating, of considering one’s appetite and all that might fill it. And yes, one of its vignettes deals with a couple who has sex with food, so there’s that, too.
Centrally, the film is about a woman named Tampopo who owns and runs a ramen restaurant that isn’t very good.
Centrally, the film is about a woman named Tampopo who owns and runs a ramen restaurant that isn’t very good.
- 4/26/2017
- by Scott Nye
- CriterionCast
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