On a rainy night, the truck driver Goro (played by Nobu Yamazaki) drove to the delivery destination. He listened to his colleague Agang (played by Ken Watanabe), and his index finger moved a lot while he was reading about how to taste ramen, so he decided to temporarily stop by the roadside. Shop to eat noodles to satisfy your cravings. It happens that Dandelion (Nobuko Miyamoto), the owner of the ramen shop, is being harassed by his childhood playmate A Jian (Riya Yasaka), and the brave Goro draws a knife to help fight off the evil party, and decides to help Dandelion, who is raising his son alone, make delicious ramen and revitalize the shop. internal business.
Itami Shisan, who plays and directs, is full of talents as a literary author, advertising creative, illustrator and commercial designer. At the age of 51, he officially directed his first feature film "Funeral" (お Funeral Ceremony, 1984). However, "Funeral" quoted many scenes from classic Hollywood works in the 1930s and 1940s, and was criticized by famous film critic Lianmi Shigehiko. Therefore, he started from the second film "Dandelion" (タンポポ, 1985). , hug the audience. The tone of comedy makes Itami thirteen's films very popular. The popular themes are embedded with sharp social observations, ironic black humor, well-designed lens language and image codes, so that there are still many impressive works in addition to hilarity. It can stand the tempering of the times.
"Dandelion" is an authentic gourmet movie. From the selection of ingredients, cooking techniques, chef's professional spirit, taste etiquette and methodology, it is completely complete. In the process of the heroine Dandelion's constant trial and error, and the process of improving her craftsmanship, the audience also took an introduction to ramen. Functionality, everything is covered. After watching this film, it seems that I have learned enough knowledge to open a ramen shop. Not only does it make people admire the Japanese people's national character of paying attention to details, but also the delicacy of the director (also by Itami Thirteen) is remarkable. In addition to the food itself, the cultural background of ramen is also naturally intertwined in the film, such as Dandelion's visit to a restaurant opened by the Chinese to steal the soup recipe, and "Lailaixuan", a reference to the founding of Japanese ramen in 1910 (Meiji 43). The name of the store all shows the context of Japanese ramen influenced by Chinese cuisine; ramen is a food for the market class to fill their stomachs. If you are not hungry, don’t eat it. Too much noodles left are disrespectful to the store owner. A drop of soup is the ultimate tribute, and the details of these delicious ramen are also presented in the film, which is quite comprehensive.
"Dandelion" is also a movie based on the American Western genre, not because the protagonist Goro always wears a cowboy-style wide-brimmed hat (which he refuses to take off even in the shower), and not only because of the heroic plot, strong The silent fringe man, the bromance between heroes and the pioneering spirit of breaking into the unknown. Itami thirteen transplanted the American dream spirit of the western film "with self-effort to realize the dream in the heart" into the heroine Dandelion's struggle; the heroic appearance of the protagonist Goro after the completion of the task is a perfect match for the western The lone hero image of a wolf in the wilderness.
In addition to the main story, Itami Thirteen also stuffed a lot of subplots into the movie, including a fake lady's course to learn Western-style table manners, a boss who pretends to be authoritative but is far less powerful than a low-level employee, and is so poor. A group of beggars who slept in the wind, but learned to taste delicious food from the leftovers...etc. It seems that it has nothing to do with the plot, but from the indispensable link in life, it shows the various forms of beings at all levels of society. Among them, the white-clothed gangster played by Koji Koji of the military office, while soaking in women's sensuality and feasting on it, even before he died in the arms of the beautiful woman, he still remembered the delicacies he had tasted.
Influenced by his wife (Nobuko Miyamoto, the heroine of the film), her family runs a funeral agency, Itami San often discusses death in her works. Although "Dandelion" is a comedy with a lively and bright tone, the shadow of death always haunts the whole film: the heroine Dandelion is a single mother whose husband has died, and the man in white played by Yakusho Hirohito died in blood in a street shootout. What makes people laugh and cry is the story of a dying housewife in the side story. The husband, who finally rushed home, learned that his wife was incapacitated. In order to keep her awake and stay in the world, the husband ordered her to cook. The half-life wife dragged her swaying body to cut vegetables, Pick up the pot, fry a plate of fried rice with the last strength of life, and then die. In tears, the husband asked the children to carefully taste the last dish cooked by the mother himself. After seeing this, he really didn't know whether to be moved by this couple's relationship, or whether he should be heartbroken for the experience of a woman who has to be a cow and a horse until she dies.
Itami Thirteen is a master of storytelling. His script plot itself is charming enough. The text description alone is quite attractive, and there are memes everywhere. And his images are also carefully managed, colliding with the already wonderful story to create a more fiery spark. For example, in the first scene of the opening scene, Itami Thirteen filmed a theater that was waiting for the movie to start. The situation inside and outside the screen was the same, and the contrast was dialectical. Suddenly, the man in white talked to the camera about the philosophy of film, breaking the fourth wall between the inside and outside of the screen, as if challenging the book to the audience, and also showing the director's incomparable confidence in the film work. Another example is the man in white and his female companion in a hotel room while having fun and eating delicious food. The man sprinkles salt and pepper on the female companion, squeezes lemon juice, dips fresh cream on his breast, flows honey through his lips, and makes the woman soaked in wine. The live shrimp jumped on their fair belly, and finally the two passed the egg yolk with their tongues until they bit the egg and reached a climax. The montage of these few scenes, although there was no coitus at all, did their best to tease the audience. taste buds and libido.
The long-shot scheduling when Goro and Ah Jian clashed in the Dandelion store was also very exciting. First, the deep-field shots were used to shoot the inside of the store, and the levels of the previous (the two men's subordinates), the middle (Goro), and the later (Ajian and Dandelion) scenes were Create a sense of crisis that the protagonist is surrounded by the protagonist; then the camera is pushed out of the store, and the fighting scene is watched in a medium shot, creating a sense of space at the door of the store, and creating the effect of the subordinate being sent flying; finally, the camera is zoomed in into a close-up of the dandelion mother and child, only depicted with shadows The intensity of the fight, the focus is on the eyes of the mother and son Dandelion who both fear and adore Goro. Completing three storyboards with unique meanings and functions in one long shot shows the director's proficiency in the language of the shots and scene scheduling. It is said that itami thirteen strictly instructed the actors to perform according to the lines of the script, not a single word can be added or subtracted, and all the props that will be photographed in the screen are also strictly checked (this is similar to Yasujiro Ozu), maybe it is This kind of requirement can make him shoot such a picture with such a precise rhythm.
Itami San's "Dandelion" is a classic food movie. It not only makes the filming mouth-watering, but also makes the audience better understand the dish of ramen. It also uses appetite to contrast sexual desire, reflecting the absurd but realistic situation of all social classes. It is the work of a master. But this film with a female protagonist is hardly considered a female film.
In the film, the heroine Dandelion just barely survived the day, but in the end, she successfully reborn and became the owner of a bright and popular ramen shop. On the surface, it seems to be a story of female empowerment and self-improvement, but it is not. Opening a ramen shop is actually the dream of Dandelion's deceased husband. She just kept the storefront in place of her dead husband (the ghost of guarding patriarchy), and Dandelion's desire for male eroticism: looking for the second spring, was killed early in the film. . Although Dandelion works hard to improve her competitiveness, all the teachers who support her are all male, and Dandelion is relatively passive in the process of learning. This film may show women's strength, plasticity, and potential as much as men's strength, but women's dynamism is all given by men, which may be the sad reality of that era.
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