Eric Khoo · 2018
Ramen Teh (aka Ramen Shop)
A film as introspective as ramen eaten alone, and as rich as the ten-hour pork broth that brims the bowl.
Watch on MUBIYou can never rush a bowl of ramen. First you contemplate it. You gently take in the aroma. This film asks the same of you.
Where an American script would give you dialogue, Eric Khoo cuts away to a still lake, an empty staircase, and you hear the conversation anyway. You hear it better because the version in your head is the one you would have said.
That is ma, a Japanese concept where negative space gives shape to the whole. Ma is the pause between the lines, the shot that lingers. You only get it if you wait.
The one time two people finally say everything, she yells in Cantonese, he yells in Japanese, neither understands anything, but the feeling is heard.
Khoo is Singaporean, and Ramen Teh is a love letter to his native land, the noise of the hawker centre against the hush of a Takasaki ramen shop, an uncle who talks with his mouth full next to a nephew who barely talks at all.
The movie is also a reckoning with the injustice of bygone feuds and their effect on the generations that follow. It is a film about forgiveness and food. It is the richness of umami, a flavor never on the surface yet always deep within the broth.
But none of that is said. You will only feel it if you take the time to let the movie seep in slowly.
