The first Japanese Noodle Western.
1985-11-23
$1.5M
115 min
In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making". Interspersed are satirical vignettes about the importance of food to different aspects of human life.
Nobuko Miyamoto is the eponymous lady who runs her small noodle bar always with the same regulars and... well it's all just a bit routine. That is until "Gorô" (Tsutomu Yamazaki) and his young sidekick "Gun" (Ken Watanabe) arrive and decide they are going to help her realise her dream to improve her shop. Her emporium also serves as the lynch pin for a few tangential stories that focus around her customers and their need for food - and not only for nourishment, either! My favourite has to be the old woman who insists of squishing the life out of his produce then not buying anything - much to the chagrin of the poor shopkeeper. There is also quite a fun tale of an housewife on her deathbed who rises, just before the end, to cook her family a delicious dinner; and of a gangster - clad in a white suit, who finds quite an erotic way to use his dinner, too. It is funny and quirky, this film, with some really engaging performances and the two hours it takes just flies by.
