Word: tampopo
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...TAXING WOMAN. An immovable object in the shape of a greedy, tax-resisting real estate magnate meets the irresistible force of a zealous lady tax collector. Japan's Juzo Itami (Tampopo) collects our interest and offers sly dividends...
...TAXING WOMAN. An immovable object in the shape of a greedy, tax-resisting real estate magnate meets the irresistible force of a zealous lady tax collector. Japan's Juzo Itami (Tampopo) collects our interest and offers sly dividends...
Except by Juzo Itami, a filmmaker to whom obsession is character, the source of everything that is interesting and wacko in human behavior. In last year's Tampopo he genially satirized the spiritual contortions people will undergo when gripped by a fervor for haute cuisine. In A Taxing Woman his subjects are relentless greed and implacable righteousness, and his mood is, appropriately, much darker...
...before, he is rigorously informative about the hard, occasionally grotesque labors that disproportionate passions demand of their victims. If you thought you learned more than you needed to know about the creation of the perfect noodle soup in Tampopo, you may now feel you are finding out more than you require about tax law and outlawry in contemporary Japan. But arcana have their own peculiar charms -- and their special usefulness in Itami's larger design. When his single-minded characters are thwarted in the pursuit of their hearts' odd desires, they have a tendency to burst into sudden, angry flame...
...Tampopo the amount of unpredictably bad behavior occasioned by the pursuit of a great recipe was funny and surreal. In A Taxing Woman, where the subject is money, these outbursts are more shocking than risible, especially when Ryoko's revenue-agent colleagues eventually stage a mass raid on Gondo's home and demonstrate they are every bit as mad in their pursuit of justice as he is in defense of miserliness...