User:10000BL/The Ramen Girl
The Ramen Girl - Robert Allan Ackerman
- Title: The Ramen Girl
- Year: 2008
- Director: Robert Allan Ackerman
Annotation:
Abby decides to move to Tokyo to be with her boyfriend. She also found a job at a Japanese company as a copy editor. Unfortunately her boyfriend is asked by his work to go to Osaka. Abby asks him to stay, she came for him and is not happy to see him leaving so soon after she arrived. Her boyfriend refuses and It turns out he was not so happy that she came to Tokyo to live with him.
Abby becomes very emotional after her boyfriends leaves, she sees from a balcony a ramen restaurant and decides to go there. The owner feels sorry for her and gives her a bowl of ramen for free. After she finished the food she sees a big Maneki Neko (Lucky Cat). The arm of the cat starts to move and it looks like it tries to lure her into something, it is sort of a sign into something. She thanks the owners for the ramen and decides to go back the next to day for another bowl of ramen. The chef recognizes her and decides to make a bowl of ramen. Abby sees him cooking, and looks like he is doing something magical. The bowl is served and while eating Abby's mood from being very sad changes to becoming very laughfull and happy. It seems that eating this bowl of ramen made her happy. ---> eating is/influenced emotion.
She 'falls in love' with ramen and wants to learn how to cook ramen. It helps that the wife of the owner is injured on her foot and for an evening she takes over the service. Customers are impressed and seem happy with her presence. She goes in an impulse back to the restaurant and demands that the chef will learns her to cook ramen. Her goal is to cook ramen to make people happy. After a debate Abby wins and the agree she will come the next day at 5 AM to start her training with cleaning. After she finished the chef checks the result and notices a dirty pan. Abby wants to clean again the pan and the have a little fight about it. She wins and cleans and keeps cleaning for the coming 'days'. She argues with the chef that she is only cleaning and that he is not learning her how to cook ramen. She leaves but comes back. ---> the whole cleaning reminds me of the Karate kid. It is sort of a test, how much she really wants it.
The chef stays grumpy and hard for her (destroying her phone, being harsh, hitting, yelling). The wife of the chef is less hard and gives her money as a reward for her hard work. She stays cleaning and through an accident a box of old pictures falls open and she find old pictures of the chef in Paris. A happy chef posing in front of the Tower of Eiffel and a restaurant.
The next day Abby knows, she wants to become a ramen chef