Jimami Tofu: When Food is Given a Narrative [Film Review]

TL;DR This is an amazing movie, about food, and about so much more. This is a movie for all the food-obsessed and emotionally-unexpressive people. Prepare lots of tissues. 

Occasionally, the worlds of film and food combine. And the result is always amazing. I know my blog ends up being a food review blog. It becomes a bit clinical, and a bit too cold. But I started food blogging, first on facebook, now on Instagram and this blog, because I believed food was a vessel for memories. Jotting down my food experiences was like writing down those memories. Memories are ephemeral, until they find a tangible object to hang onto. Food is something for my memories to latch onto. If ever I had the chance to eat the same foods again, those memories would come rushing back. It could be something as nostalgic as my grandmother's cooking, or something as superficial as the food from younger days trying to be atas and eat expensive food.

Jimami Tofu is a film exactly about that. 

It's marketed as a few things. A film about Okinawan dynastic cuisine. A film bridging a story from Singapore and a story from Japan. A film about love. A film about moving on. But where it really hits the spot, is in giving food a narrative. 

The film starts with an aspiring Singaporean chef, Ryan. After his food critic ex, Yuki, disappears on him, his search for her lands him in Okinawa, Japan (while she ironically is working in the Singapore office of her magazine). There, he begins to apprentice under an aged, rather eccentric chef, learning about Okinawan cuisine. Meanwhile, his relationship with Yuki's childhood friend, Nami, blossoms despite lingering feelings for Yuki. 

[Spoilers below] 

The film is beautiful, raw, and intimate. The story-telling is unpolished, and the movie can be a bit draggy, as it shifts in and out between flashbacks and present day. But the story it builds is one that is close to many Singaporeans' hearts, and so as unpolished and as raw as it is, it hits home, sometimes, too close to home. 

Many films about food centre around a chef perfecting his skills, a chef overcoming challenges in a competitive environment, a chef that just happens to be the main character. In these films, food is merely a prop and a decorative element, but hardly a key storytelling device. Otherwise, they start becoming a documentary about food, a visual encyclopedia about certain food cultures and cuisines set in the format of a movie. 

But in Jimami Tofu, the food is the central story-telling device. Ryan and Yuki, because of their professions, fall in love over food. They fight because of food. Ryan looks for Yuki in Okinawa but ends up apprenticing under Sakumoto (who happens to be Yuki's estranged father) because he was so taken with Okinawan food. Ryan takes over Sakumoto's restuarant when he passes on, and Yuki eventually returns because of a bad food review she saw. 

Well, yes, in these moments, it could be argued that food is still a prop. 

But the moment of the film for me, was when Yuki accepts Ryan's invitation to a dinner, and he serves her the Okinawan food she grew up with, the food he learnt how to cook from her father. This gift from Ryan is not just a gift of food, but a gift of memories. As she slowly eats the food, every bite triggers some kind of memory from her childhood, of her and her father, that she had somehow taught herself to forget. This is especially poignant because only moments earlier in the film after her father's regular patrons were reminiscing over their memories of him, she had sourly commented that he hadn't left behind any for her. Ryan's dinner for her reminded her that her father did indeed leave her many memories to be cherished, and all of those memories were contained in the food that her father made for her when she was a child. 

These moments hit close to home. The moments where we turn on the care and love of our parents with hurtful words. And the moments where food that tastes of home triggers memories that we stubbornly stuffed away in one corner. And sometimes, these moments are too late. And we can only learn to use the taste of our memories as closure, and move on. 

In a culture so unwilling to be emotionally honest, food is the language we resort to using to show our love. The harshest words are softened with a home-cooked meal. Aplogies we can't bring ourselves to voice are communicated through food. Regrets that we don't know how to deal with, we store them in food. And nostalgia we need to relive, we relive through eating. 

Jimami Tofu is a beautiful movie, not just because of the beautiful Okinawan setting, but because this is a story that so many of us resonate with. Singapore is often said to be one of the most food-obsessed countries in the world, and also one of the least emotionally-expressive, and I sometimes wonder if the two are linked. Regardless, this is a movie I think the food-obsessed and emotionally-unexpressive should all catch. 

Jimami Tofu is showing exclusively at GV Suntec City and GV Paya Lebar on Saturdays and Wednesdays respectively, until the end of October. Click here to book tickets. 

[Disclaimer: I was not paid or sponsored or approached to write this. I wish I was. I genuinely love this movie and have been trying to watch since I saw the trailer last year.]