The Ramen Girl

Abby, an American who followed her boyfriend to Tokyo, is left alone in the city when he leaves. She has no language and no job. She walks into the ramen shop below her flat and cries into the soup. She asks Maezumi, who runs the place, to teach her to make ramen. He speaks no English and does not want her. The film is not interested in food. It is interested in being an apprentice without understanding your teacher's language: Abby and Maezumi do not understand each other at any point, and the teaching runs entirely on repetition, imitation and being shouted at. That failure to communicate is the best thing in it. The form is a culture-clash film set in Tokyo: a narrow kitchen, night streets, the counter. The pace is low and the kitchen scenes are long. Robert Allan Ackerman directed. Most of it was shot in Japan and the Japanese actors play in their own language. Brittany Murphy plays Abby and Toshiyuki Nishida plays Maezumi. This is among her last films; she died in 2009. Tsutomu Yamazaki, a well-known figure in Japan, is also in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like food-centred stories and culture-clash films. Who it is not for: anyone with no patience for cliché. The film largely builds Japan from outside as a source of spiritual instruction, and its final section resolves too easily.