Tampopo
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| Tampopo | |
|---|---|
 Pamphlet cover |
|
| Directed by | Juzo Itami |
| Produced by | Seigo Hosogoe Juzo Itami Yasushi Tamaoki |
| Written by | Juzo Itami |
| Starring | Tsutomu Yamazaki Nobuko Miyamoto Ken Watanabe |
| Studio | Itami Productions |
| Distributed by | Toho |
| Release date(s) | November 23, 1985 |
| Running time | 115 minutes |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
Tampopo (タンポポ Tanpopo, literally "dandelion") is a 1985 Japanese comedy film by director Juzo Itami, starring Tsutomu Yamazaki, Nobuko Miyamoto and Ken Watanabe. The publicity for the film calls it the first noodle western, a play on the term Spaghetti Western (films about the American West made by Italian production studios).
[edit] Plot summary
Tampopo begins when a pair of truck drivers, an experienced one named Goro and a young sidekick named Gun (played by Tsutomu Yamazaki and Ken Watanabe respectively), happen onto a decrepit roadside fast food stop selling ramen noodles. The business is not doing too well, and after getting involved in a fight, the heroes decide to help the widowed owner, Tampopo ("Dandelion", played by Nobuko Miyamoto), turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle soup making".
The main narrative is interspersed with stories involving consumables on several levels. The primary subplot involves a white-suited yakuza gangster (Koji Yakusho) and his mistress (Fukumi Kuroda), who find eyebrow-raising new ways to use food. Other satirical vignettes involve a lowly office intern who upstages his senior management superiors by displaying a vast and cultured culinary knowledge while ordering at a gourmet French restaurant; a housewife who rises from her deathbed to cook one last meal for her family; and a women's etiquette class in learning how to eat spaghetti properly, i.e. without a sound as "people from foreign countries would absolutely never forgive loud slurping". Another subplot involves a corner store clerk who has to deal with an older woman obssessed with squeezing food. The clerk's scene segues into a restaurant involving gangsters and stock market scams.
[edit] Further reading
- Ashkenazi, Michael. "Food, Play, Business, and the Image of Japan in Itami Juzo's Tampopo." In Anne Bower, ed., Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film (New York: Routledge, 2004).
[edit] External links
- Tampopo at the Internet Movie Database
- Tampopo (Japanese) at the Japanese Movie Database
- Review: Hinson, Hal, 'Tampopo', June 17, 1987, Washington Post. Accessed 2008 March 29.
