After a serene lesson on how to properly and patiently appreciate a bowl of ramen, Tampopo launches into a madcap series of comic vignettes, each of which considers our obsessive—often sensual—relationship with food. The main narrative on which much of this hangs involves a pair of ramen-obsessed truck drivers (Tsutomo Yamazaki and a very young Ken Watanabe) who stop at a struggling shop run by an overwhelmed single mother (Nobuko Miyamoto). Moved by her predicament, they offer to train her in the ways of ramen and reboot her business. Carrying himself like a cowboy, Yamazaki cuts a figure that’s at once silly and romantic, especially when embers begin to smolder between him and Miyamoto’s Tampopo. The interludes, meanwhile, range from softcore silliness—one couple goes way beyond whipped cream—to slapstick hijinks. (Especially amusing is a grocery store clerk’s attempts to catch an older shopper in the act of perversely squeezing soft food items.) You get the sense that writer-director Juzo Itami is himself squeezing Japanese custom, even as he’s offering a fondly humorous survey of it.
(5/1/2025)
