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After truck driver Goro (Yamazaki) and his sidekick Gun (Watanabe) get roughed up in a nondescript noodle bar while defending its owner Tampopo (Miyamoto) they decide to help her waning business. The problem, according to these self-styled gourmets is her noodles. The trio’s colourful efforts and undercover research – aided by a vagabond master noodle-maker, a cheerful chauffeur and an irascible building contractor – send them through Tokyo’s hectic noodle joints in search of the perfect recipe which they hope will reverse her fortunes. Throughout Tampopo Juzo Itami places – with Altman-esque skill – a number of laugh-out-loud and sometimes downright surreal food-related vignettes peopled by disparate characters whose lives interweave with those of the protagonists. A masterclass in the art of Japanese cuisine, Tampopo is one of the great food-related movies of recent years easily holding its noodle against foodie classics such as Eat Drink Man Woman, Big Night and Ratatouille. It’s a film to savour and slurp down just like the soup, pork, shinachiku roots, spring onions and noodles that triumphantly make up Tampopo’s new signature dish. “Perfection”.

 

Alexander Ballinger on 21st September 2011
View all 20 of Alexander Ballinger's reviews