Today we were delighted and perplexed by Tampopo (1985), a Japanese movie playing in Minneapolis’ Lagoon Cinema. This is a movie about food, featuring a main storyline, detailing a widow who is failing as a ramen cook, and the men who come together to help her master the art of ramen service, from cooking to presentation to preparing her hole-in-the-wall eatery to host her guests. Interspersed is a far more whimsical story about a fellow who appears to be a gangster with a food fetish, and his main squeeze.
The main story is well done. The characters are well thought out, and, as an audience, we get the feeling that, outside the movie frame, they don’t sit around smoking cigs until they are called upon to appear again, but have lives they are also living, from the divorced trucker who used to box, to the ramen sensei on loan from a band of hobos-cum-gourmets. Coming together, their interaction initiate the audience into delight as the movie leisurely explores metaphorical blind alleys, such as the second scene, in which a trucker is reading a book on ramen appreciation; it’s brought to life for us, provoking laughter, then thoughtfulness.
Source: Flixist
In this ocean of the main plot are islands of perplexity. Perhaps inserted to highlight a point, although I often didn’t really see it, they primarily involve the gangster, his girl, and their use of food during sex, which was quite surprising, and a little alarming. But they are not the only sources of perplexity, as we also see a woman on her deathbed, her desperate husband begging her to live on, until he loses his temper and demands that she cook dinner for the family.
It may not be a lively kitchen workout, but she gets the job done before meeting her end.
The movie bounces from main story to side story to dead-end, back to the main story, never hurried, but with enough impulse and unexpected >FIST FIGHT!< turns to keep you guessing. And, in the end, a death scene was one of the most thematically loyal, obscure, and interesting I’ve ever seen at the cinema. I’ll never look at yam jammed intestines in quite the same way again.
Recommended, if you like offbeat movies.
