On Location: Japan

“Life itself is a proper binge,” Julia Child once famously said. “What are you?" Gordon Ramsay once asked, to which he received the reply, "An idiot sandwich.” Though the two quotes seem incongruous at first, in the 1985 Japanese classic comedy-western “Tampopo,” the Julia Child-esque and the Gordon Ramsay-esque are married into an irreverent love letter to food (specifically ramen) and, less specifically, to life in general. As director Juzo Itami constantly reminds us, the many ingredients that combine to make the perfect bowl of ramen are often as elusive as the ingredients to find a perfect experience in life.

Recently remastered and re-released in theaters by the Criterion Collection, “Tampopo” is an irreverent, raucous and plucky film that views a number of parts of life in a rapidly changing Japan — gender politics, economic worries, bullying, socio-political shift, cultural conflict and, most importantly, sex — all through the lens of food.

It follows the widowed owner of a struggling ramen shop, Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto). When two truck drivers, Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki) and Gun (a very young and, for his fans, unusually goofy Ken Watanabe) stumble into her shop and defend her against harassment from another drunk customer, Pisken (Rikiya Yasuoka), they strike up a friendship. Slowly but steadily, they enlist a series of methods to help Tampopo perfect both her noodles and her soup, reviving her shop’s business and making a new set of friends and enemies along the way.

Despite its focus on the humorous, Western-style exploits of Tampopo and her various teachers, “Tampopo” does not solely follow the gang at the ramen shop. Indeed, some of the film’s best and most uproariously funny scenes are the various vignettes celebrating the role of food in people’s lives and exploring the ways in which food helps them to express themselves. These scenes are a masterclass in filmmaking from Itami: Typically, the scene will be following Tampopo, Goro and Gun in their “Rocky”-esque training scenes; then, catching the eye of a passerby, the action will segue into a vignette on the role of food in that person's life.

In one scene, a lowly businessman impresses his superiors, in the face of their constant belittlement, with his extensive knowledge of the cuisine at a French restaurant. In another, an etiquette teacher drills a class of women on European table manners, only to be constantly interrupted by a Westerner at a nearby table loudly slurping his noodles. In the film’s bawdiest (and funniest, in my opinion) subplot, a mysterious man in a white suit and his lover explore a number of increasingly farcical (or erotic, depending on your view) ways to incorporate food into the bedroom.

The film's greatest charm is its relatable spunk, both of the main character and of the narrative as a whole. In “Tampopo,” Itami has created a film that resonates and makes audiences laugh everywhere at any time for three reasons: everyone eats, everyone laughs and everyone has sex. Sometimes all at the same time.