Word: itami
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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TAMPOPO An Eastern western: the cowboy is a truck driver, his homestead is a Japanese noodle restaurant. Writer-Director Juzo Itami offers a free-range meditation on how gourmet fads deliriously distort man's second favorite drive...
...while Itami has fun with Western movie genres and figures, he remains distinctly a Japanese artist. Wild as he is, he stays true to the basics, and that's what Tampopo is all about...
Pretty corny stuff, huh? Through the ridiculous plot line, Itami satirizes man's obsessive pursuit of pleasure in satisfying his basic needs. Itami sees nothing wrong with wild pleasure-hunting as long as the original purpose of such a pursuit--man's need to nourish himself--is not forgotten; in short, hedonism with sense. When this is forgotten, pleasure crosses the fine line into perversion...
What is doubly remarkable about the movie is how Itami keeps the audience so interested in Tampopo's struggles. The director garnishes her rags-to-riches story with elements of samurai adventure and Sergio Leone western, and then has the actors play it straight. Amazingly, it's a satire that involves the audience in the action as much as the characters themselves. When the noodle senseis test her progress after a few weeks, one finds oneself as tense and nervous as if one were watching a shoot...
...Itami turns this meal of a movie into a feast by spicing up the main plot with a wacky subplot to make clear the connection between food and sex. Two characters who keep returning are a hedonistic gangster (Koji Yakusho) and his loving, ever-ready moll (Fukumi Kuroda). In one love-making scene, he dips her breasts in whipped cream, and in another he seasons them with salt and lemon juice before licking it all up. Later, he takes an egg yolk in his mouth; they pass it back and forth as they kiss until she climaxes, and the yolk...