Tampopo
Tampopo (タンポポ or 蒲公英) is a 1987 Japanese comedy film about two truck drivers, one young and one experienced, who happen onto a decrepit roadside fast food stop, selling noodles. 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 food porn on several levels. The camerawork and filmic techniques are sophisticated for the time, story strands transitioning on the fly, some of the characters of the subsidiary storylines addressing the audience directly or hamming it up deliberately.
The main storyline has been compared by some to that of the Western movie Shane.
Tampopo was directed by Juzo Itami and stars Tsutomu Yamazaki and Nobuko Miyamoto. The publicity for the film calls it "the first 'noodle western,'" a play on the "Spaghetti Westerns"--Western films made in Italy.
See also: Iron Chef
