Tampopo (タンポポ or 蒲公英) is a 1985 Japanese comedy film by director Itami Juzo, starring Yamazaki Tsutomu, Miyamoto Nobuko and Watanabe Ken. The publicity for the film calls it "the first 'noodle western,'" a play on the "Spaghetti Westerns"--Western films made in Italy.

Plot summary

Tampopo begins when two truck drivers, one young and one experienced, happen onto a decrepit roadside fast food stop selling ramen. The business is not doing too well, and after getting involved in a fight, the heroes decide to help the young lady owner Tampopo to turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle soup making".

The main narrative is interspersed with stories involving consumables ("food porn") on several levels. The primary B story involves a white-suited yakuza (Yakusho Koji) and his mistress (Kuroda Fukumi) who, among other things, check into a hotel and do PG things with crawfish that one would just have to see. Other sideplots include an office intern who shows up his senior colleagues by ordering well at a French restaurant, a housewife who rises from her deathbed to cook one last meal for her family, and a women's class who learn to eat spaghetti the gaijin way.

The camerawork and filmic techniques were sophisticated for the time. Some of the story strands transition on the fly, and some of the characters address the audience directly or ham it up deliberately.

The main storyline has been compared by some to that of the Western movie Shane, and also to the movie Seven Samurai and the Western based on it, The Magnificent Seven.

While many ramen restaurants in Japan state in their description they are the one motivated from the shop in the story, few have been able to figure out which, if any, is correct.

As a tutorial towards the preparation and appreciation of ramen in general it is a recommended movie.

See also: Iron Chef, noodles

External link

• Tampopo at the IMDB
• Tampopo at the JMDb (in Japanese)