Review: the 1985 Japanese classic ‘Tampopo’

If you’ve been lucky enough to catch late Japanese actor turned filmmaker Jûzô Itami’s 1985 cult classic Tampopo, you’ll know that it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. If you haven’t seen it, I can assure you that you’ve never seen or will see anything like this in your life. It’s a true, unparalleled, impossible to duplicate original that demands to be seen in a theatre and followed up immediately by a great meal. Recently the recipient of a gorgeous and much needed 4K restoration, Tampopo combines classical genre movie tropes and characters, mixes them with a bunch of tasty surreal touches, and today looks like a film that was decades ahead of its time when it comes to how audiences react to sumptuous depictions of great looking food on screen. It’s a weird one, but it’s a blast.

Dressed in a cowboy hat and swaggering like he just stepped out of a John Wayne picture, truck driver Gorô (Tsutomu Yamakazi) and his faithful sidekick Gun (a ridiculously young looking Ken Watanabe in a small supporting role) happen upon the relatively nondescript Lai Lai Ramen Shop, run by the kindly, but somewhat lost at sea Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto). She’s a widower with a bullied school aged son trying valiantly to keep her husband’s fledgling noodle shop afloat, but her food isn’t particularly great and her patrons are often drunk and belligerent. Knowing a little bit about what makes a great ramen, Gorô feels bad for the hard working Tampopo and begins assembling a dream team of ramen experts Seven Samurai style to help save her business.

Often referred to as a “ramen western,” Itami’s film is actually a lot of different genres rolled into one, not just the most obvious one that can be inferred from the look of the film’s ruggedly attired primary protagonist and the way the story has been structured. It can also be read as a sports film, boasting a pretty great training sequence where Gorô comes across more like a coach than a mentor and framing the creation of ramen – a dish made up of several potential make-or-break components working together in harmony – as a team effort.

Tampopo also includes plenty of tangential stories that have little to do with the plot, taking breaks for skits that would make the likes of Terry Gilliam proud. A man with a toothache struggles to get to the dentist. A business lunch is rocked to its core by someone daring to order something different from the rest of the group. A female spaghetti eating etiquette class descends into hilarious chaos. An old lady torments a grocer by poking her fingers into anything she can get her hands on. There are reoccurring bits with a well dressed gourmand gangster, including an opening PSA to the audience about why you shouldn’t eat potato chips in a theatre. Again, they have nothing to do with Gorô and Tampopo, but they act as palate cleansers between the main courses of the plot. Itami has structured his film not only as a western, but as a ten course meal.

Perhaps most obviously, Tampopo might be one of the earliest examples of what we now call “food porn,” designed to tap into a viewer’s desire to devour everything in sight. Itami never shies away from the link between hunger and sexual desire (sometimes quite hilariously, drenched in cheeky eroticism), but despite being made thirty years ago Tampopo retains a remarkably timeless feel to it. For all its nods to classic cinema, the events depicted here and the food being displayed look largely the same as they do today. It proves that great food and great films never truly go out of style.

The restoration of Tampopo opens at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto on Friday, December 9^th. On December 9^th at the Lightbox’s 7pm renowned and celebrated Canadian chef Jamie Kennedy will be on hand for a post film Q&A, and on the 10^th following the 7pm show, National Post restaurant columnist Claudia McNeilly will host a Q&A. All ticket purchases at Lightbox for Tampopo will also include a coupon for a free order of gyoza with purchase of any ramen at Kinton Ramen.

Tampopo also opens at The Loft in Coburg, ON on December 9, The Bytowne Theatre in Ottawa on January 4, the Winnipeg Cinematheque on January 5, The Cinematheque in Vancouver on January 26, Cinecita in Victoria on February 7, and at the Regina Public Library Theatre in Regina, SK on February 16.

Check out the trailer for Tampopo: