Many of these scenes contain long shots (a la Godard's Weekend) that are stylized, beautiful and grotesque. Like In the Mood For Love, another favorite of mine, this film is saturated in rich colors (some times the color of the character's customes change when moving into another scene) and all the lovely costumes were designed by legend Jean Paul Gaultier.
I think in Tampopo, food is looked at as a sexy, playful and and an expression of human desire. In the Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, food, especially meat, is presented in its ugliest, most violent form. In other black humor, extreme films like Ichi the Killer, it is violence for the sake of violence. Here, the film captures the ugliness of modernization and the barbarism, lust and gluttonly plaguing the human condition.
This film is not for the light hearted. It has: nudity, violence, cannibalism and lots and lots of gross raw meat and dead animals.
Part 8 (this one features rad musician Ian Dury)
The last part was left out because I don't know how people feel about it. If you are fine with the portrayal of cannibalism, then seek it out yourself. Marrin's last costume seen in the thirteenth clip is the most spectacular (the long netted train, the feather neck piece). Simply spectacular.
