{"id":7578,"date":"2010-02-02T20:22:03","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T12:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=7578"},"modified":"2010-02-02T22:24:02","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T14:24:02","slug":"the-ramen-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/02\/02\/the-ramen-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ramen Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-ramen-girl-01\" The Ramen Girl<\/a><\/em> (2008) \u2013 on rental. Two more DVDs arrived by way of home rental near the weekend. One was the critically acclaimed psychological-sci-fi drama Moon<\/em> from last year starring Sam Rockwell, and other the third Brittany Murphy drama in my queue and from 2008 \u2013 The Ramen Girl<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This Japanese-American production feels a lot like the other fish-out-of-water films of Westerners finding their way about in Japan, including Wasabi, Lost in Translation\u2026 <\/em>heck, even The Last Samurai<\/em>. Murphy stars as Abby, an American girl who\u2019s just arrived in Tokyo to join her boyfriend, Ethan. Within the first 10 minutes or so, we find that Ethan didn\u2019t really want Abby around, so he breaks up with her and takes off to Osaka for a business trip.<\/p>\n

Distraught and in tears, Abby seeks solace in a Ramen restaurant that\u2019s near her apartment. The restaurant is run by a headstrong and not terrifically pleasant Ramen chef Maezumi (Toshiyuki Nishida) with his wife Reiko (Kimiko Yo). And at the restaurant, Abby sees a vision of a Fortune Cat beckoning, as though suggesting that the Ramen restaurant is her destiny.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d coincidentally just re-watched Wasabi<\/em> last week starring the always affable-on-screen Jean Reno, and couldn\u2019t help referencing the 2001 film as I watched The Ramen Girl<\/em>. Unlike the earlier film though, The Ramen Girl<\/em> doesn\u2019t take some of the same story short cuts \u2013 and I\u2019m referring specifically to the all too convenient contrivances of Japanese somehow being able to speak beautiful English, and vice-versa. In The Ramen Girl<\/em>, the Japanese leads \u2013 Maezumi and Reiko \u2013 and most of the supporting cast speak Japanese and don\u2019t magically acquire an English language ability by the film\u2019s end. The difficulties Abby experiences in understanding the locals persist through the film, which really adds to realism of the proceedings.<\/p>\n

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The pair of Japanese leads too discharge their roles well. I don\u2019t follow Japanese productions, so both actors are unfamiliar to me. Maezumi is gruff at at his best, and an utterly tyrannical employer at his worst \u2013 and only at about the film\u2019s last act does he somewhat soften up. So there\u2019s some level of character development and progression from start to end for him. His bad cop role is a nice counterpoint to his good cop wife, Reiko, who\u2019s sympathetic to Abby.<\/p>\n

Funnily, it\u2019s the Ramen references though that don\u2019t work well. Early on, the film hints of the almost mystical effects of a perfect bowl of Ramen, with Abby willingly suffering from Maezumi\u2019s Drill Sergeant antics only because she\u2019ll do whatever it takes to learn from the master. However, the film never quite sees this important story element to its conclusion, apart from the suggestion that preparing a bowl of Ramen needs to come from one\u2019s \u2018spirit\u2019 and not one\u2019s \u2018brains\u2019 \u2013 whatever that means.<\/p>\n

Even more disconcerting is that Abby is perpetually an emotional roller-coaster in the film. The story calls for strong reactions from her at each of the story\u2019s major junctures \u2013 crying her eyes out at being dumped, disgust at the menial labor she has to do, frustration at being unable to cook the perfect bowl of Ramen, and joy when she finally does \u2013 and it gets tiresome. And it doesn\u2019t help that Murphy displays little subtlety in each of these emo phases.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a bunch of supporting characters, a couple of them minor (like the two Japanese aunties who patronize the restaurant), but several of others which look like their parts would have some influence on the story\u2019s progression but disappointingly don\u2019t. Which leads you to wonder if their scenes were snipped to save time, or it was just sloppy writing on the script writer\u2019s part.<\/p>\n

So, it\u2019s a mixed bag. It\u2019s a watchable film if you\u2019re interested in Ramen. Just don\u2019t expect to watch this film expecting to experience some sort of epiphany on how they should be cooked.<\/p>\n

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The Ramen Girl (2008) \u2013 on rental. Two more DVDs arrived by way of home rental near the weekend. One was the critically acclaimed psychological-sci-fi drama Moon from last year starring Sam Rockwell, and other the third Brittany Murphy drama<\/p>\n

Read More The Ramen Girl<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}