"we have Good Friday mass at home"
Good Friday mass at home:
no but in all seriousness, this had all the delicious layers of Rohmer's entanglement with Catholicism -- that is to say it's all his essence as a director, different format.
the theatrical setting was, though silly, much truer to me than modern, realistic movies of religion, such as the Passion of the Christ. the Bible and its events are, put simply, a story. just like Camelot, just like…
“Oh, like a spaghetti Western, but Japanese?”
“Well, kinda, no.. I meant it’s a Western that actually involves ramen.”
I tell everyone Tampopo is a ramen Western, but that’s more of a hook than a complete description. Tampopo is a great gateway film to international cinema because it’s familiar at heart. Everything adult is flipped into childlike absurdity.
The silliness, the vignettes, the solidarity toward a common goal, and all the food! It’s a movie of playfulness, and it’s the movie I wish to have created.
“I think that there are different audiences who like different films.”
It’s not a groundbreaking statement, but amidst the polarizing views of French cinema, Maggie provides a centered response. All art - high brow, low brow, the greys in between, and the experimental - is another piece of the human experience. People can like different things without pretense. The film is a series of confining situations for Maggie, as cinephiles try to place a box around her or the film…
