Given the inexplicable/annoying ascendancy of foodie culture in recent years, it’s amazing that Tampopo hasn’t enjoyed some sort of Blade Runner-esque renaissance. The 1985 comedy by the late, great Japanese director Juzo Itami is a love letter to food and, just behind Aliens, is probably my favourite film of all time.
Tampopo was Itami’s second feature before he made a number of comic satires that took aim at everything from Japanese healthcare to the Yakuza (the latter earned from him a visit from some mobsters who, none-too-pleased with their depiction on the big screen, beat him up and slashed his face) leading up to his untimely death in mysterious circumstances in 1997. Out of all his work, Tampopo remains his best-known feature in the West.
The film tells the story of a pair of long-distance truck drivers who cross paths with the heroine of the title (her name translates as ‘Dandelion’ in English), a struggling single mum who runs her own ramen shop in Tokyo. Tampopo is sweet, kind and hard-working, but her cooking is terrible. Recognising the potential for greatness, the elder of the two truckers – who just happens to be a wandering gourmet – takes her under his wing and begins a quest to make her a shining star of culinary excellence. Sprinkled into this mixture are a series of mini-vignettes, unconnected to the main narrative, which serve as gentle meditations on the relationship between food and everyday life.
It says a lot about Itami’s skills as a writer and director that these skits are just as absorbing as the main story. My favourite is the one in which an elderly patriarch stuffs his face to the point of catastrophe and some quick-thinking staff at the restaurant must stage a dramatic, life-saving intervention with the aid of a vacuum cleaner;
The rest of the movie is equal parts warmth, charm and insight, with a few saucy (pun intended) interludes courtesy of a Japanese gangster and his girlfriend. And there are, of course, a LOT of scenes devoted to the beautiful entity that is Japanese noodle soup. Watch this clip and tell me it doesn’t make you even a little bit peckish.
(Fun fact: the young man is played by Ken Watanabe, most recently seen looking worried a lot in this year’s Godzilla reboot.)
Of course, the film’s obsession with food is merely an analogy which allows the director to muse on the nature of human existence. Itami sees food not simply as fuel, but as a hub around which everything revolves; life, love, death, laughter, family, social etiquette, triumph and loss. My favourite scene in the entire film occurs when Tampopo enlists the help of a wise old noodle chef living among Tokyo’s down and outs. Before he leaves his homeless brethren behind, an informal choir of vagrants sends him off by singing a song about how much they’ll miss him. It’s heartwarming stuff, and I couldn’t find a clip of it anywhere but that’s fine because it just means that now you have to sit down and watch the film to see what I’m on about.
As a film, Tampopo is every bit as satisfying and more-ish as the ramen it exalts. It’s cinematic comfort food that is good for multiple servings. And as an added bonus, no-one in the film takes any fucking pictures of what they’re eating.
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