The Ramen Girl, directed by Robert Allan Ackerman (2008), is a film about how a young woman finds her true passion in cooking ramen. This film starts off like many about women, focused on her relationship with a man. However, the relationship quickly folds in on itself and her story shifts towards the ramen shop down the street from her. Over a short period of time she’s about to see how a chefs passion can twist a moment of a persons life into happiness, sadness, or self-reflection because of the emotions that they put into the food that they cook. She convinces an expert ramen chef to be her mentor and teach her his ways of cooking ramen. She doesn’t not reach his level of expectation or get the blessings that she was looking for but she does carry her passion with her back home. That in itself is worth all of the nonsense that happens because of her lack of understanding of Japanese culture and language. I expected the whole film to be a mess of a story and dated because of how the poster represents it but it exceeded my predetermined expectations. Which was a relief. I wish the marketing department had used the last shot of the film with the building than the images that they did. All in all, I enjoyed the story and what it trying to say.
Watched on hulu.com
Grizzly Era Studios 