Maverick Japanese director Juzo Itami thought “big” when making his 1985 film, Tampopo. He knew there's enough drama and action in just about any restaurant to provide material for a conventional feature film, but the director brought energy and originality to all his work, always reaching for more. Tampopo is essentially a movie about life itself that contains all of the themes of the best restaurant films, and much more. That's why it's the greatest “restaurant” movie ever made.
One way Itami innovates with Tampopo is by making it zigzag left and right with a series of interspersed, standalone vignettes carrying various food-related messages. The film's opening scene is a piece of meta-cinema that Itami uses to tell his audience not to expect a conventional movie experience. A dapper gangster (Koji Yakusho) in an immaculate white suit is about to watch a movie in the front row of a theater while enjoying a spread of gourmet fare with his girlfriend. Breaking the fourth wall, the thuggish gourmand looks directly into the camera to address the Tampopo audience. He asks what they're eating at the moment, and talks about how he hates people eating loud, crunchy snacks in movie theaters. He muses on life and death, talking about how people see a short film of their life just before dying.
The next scene is another one of the film’s standalone, self-contained vignettes. This one's a parody of martial arts films, but instead of a wise master instructing his pupil on fighting techniques, the ramen sensei’s lesson is on the minute details of how to eat ramen the “right” way. “Appreciate its gestalt,” he intones. “Savor the aromas.” The scene’s played straight, with none of the comic elements sprinkled throughout the film. Itami’s announcing that, while his approach to the story is playful, his film’s about reverence for perfectionism in food culture. In fact, his decision to hire a food stylist for Tampopo was a revolutionary move that forever changed how food was depicted in Japanese cinema.
After the two independent opening vignettes, the director gets to the main storyline, which revolves around a mediocre ramen noodle shop whose charming, but hapless, owner, Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto, Itami’s then real-life wife), needs help in turning her business around. Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki, who plays his role with an understated charisma), a truck driver representing the wandering cowboy archetype, rides into town as cowboys in movies do. Goro and his sidekick arrive at Tampopo’s restaurant by chance and are underwhelmed by her ramen.
Goro makes it his mission to change that, although he has no particular culinary knowledge of ramen besides a discerning palate. He recognizes Tampopo’s passion, and dedicates himself to her cause. It doesn't take him long to get a beat-down after starting a fight with a gangster who insults Tampopo. Tampopo, a widow with a son around 10, nurses him back to health, and the bond’s sealed.
The director called his film a “ramen Western,” as he employed a number of Western tropes in the story. Goro’s the mysterious stranger with a moral code who arrives in town to rescue someone in need, as in the movie Shane, which provides the basic plot structure for Tampopo. Goro assembles a “posse” to help that person in need—think of The Magnificent Seven minus the gunslinger glamor. It's a motley crew of food-obsessed men who are heroic in a humble, altruistic way. There's the legendary noodle-making expert who lives among the homeless in a park, a rough-around-the-edges contractor who works to improve the restaurant design, and a chauffeur for a wealthy ramen lover who lends his expertise in noodle-making.
Goro introduces discipline to Tampopo‘s routine. In one comic scene, borrowed from Rocky, he holds a stopwatch as he puts his trainee, clad in sweats, through a rigorous jogging routine set to a triumphant score. He also takes the stopwatch into the kitchen to clock Tampopo’s completion of her duties. The kitchen gets tidier, the bowls in the cabinets are stacked neatly, the vegetables are washed, and the bar’s wiped down. Like Mickey in Rocky, Goro’s preparing his “athlete” for the big fight.
Nobuko Miyamoto’s endearing performance, which made her into a major actress in Japan, is the heart of this film. It's an understated anchor to a film whose eccentric structure requires one to hold it together. The actress is earnest and vulnerable, yet resilient, leaving the flashy acting to other cast members. And while there's a comic element to Tampopo fumbling around in the kitchen as she's struggling to learn her craft, her character retains a quiet dignity. It's a role that allowed Miyamoto to offer a rare example in Japanese cinema of a woman’s hard-earned success.
Tampopo is a film about one woman’s quest to become a shokunin, someone who pursues mastery at their craft, whether it's making swords or making noodles, with dedication and humility. The various outside-the-plot vignettes Itami employs give the main story time to breathe. It's a restaurant film, but more than that it's a film about people's relationship to food in general, incorporating such themes as love, sex, ambition, death, and family and friendship dynamics. It also serves as a satirical commentary on Japanese customs, one of the director's specialties. In one hilarious scene depicting a business dinner, a rebel salaryman dares to go off script with a sophisticated order that includes a fine wine. This attracts plenty of side eye from his co-workers, as underlings in that situation in Japan are expected to order what the boss orders.
Itami explores the food-sex connection with a vignette featuring the white-suited gangster and his girlfriend as they incorporate their love of cuisine into their exploration of eroticism. Part of their foreplay is to pass an egg yolk back and forth between their mouths. They also bring live shrimp and whipped cream into their horny fun.
In another standalone scene, a mother rises from her deathbed to cook a last meal for her family. There's a scene involving a prim older woman teaching a group of young women how to eat spaghetti silently. The lesson gets wrecked when a nearby “gaijin” begins slurping his pasta.
Towards the end of the film, after unknown assailants gun down the white-suited gangster from the opening scene, he tells his girlfriend he regrets that they never got to eat grilled wild boar intestines. And then, just before dying, the gangster looks to the sky and says, “My last movie is starting.”
Tampopo is picaresque and hilarious, full of absurdity and charm. It's a philosophical film with a sense of humor that provides a bemused mediation on human nature. Juzo Itami called it a “ramen Western,” which was good marketing, but this film defies categorization. The director signals the completion of Tampopo’s total makeover when she appears in her white chef’s hat and a crisp white-collared shirt, looking confident and in control, so far from the uncertain, mousy lady she used to be.
At the end, after Tampopo’s hard-earned triumph, the film reverts to another Western trope. Goro, the “shining hero,” gets back in his truck and rides off into the sunset. It could’ve ended with Goro marrying Tampopo—many viewers would have welcomed this—but that's too pat for a restless director like Juzo Itami.