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| Showtimes | Wed March 17 8:15 PM / KAB317D |
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USA, 1999, 90 mins, 35mm,
color, English
Director/Screenplay Philip Kan GOTANDA (in person); Executive Producers Philip Kan GOTANDA, Dale MINAMI; Producers Diane TAKEI, Pamela WU, Wendy BRAITMAN; Dir. Photography Michael CHIN; Editor Maysie HOY; Prod. Designer Kate EDMUNDS; Music Dan KURAMOTO; Cast Sab SHIMONO (in person), Julia NICKSON, Tamlyn TOMITA (in person), Greg WATANABE, Kelvin Han YEE, Philip Kan GOTANDA
This year’s Sundance Film Festival called Philip Kan Gotanda’s feature debut LIFE TASTES GOOD "a truly unique composition of quirky characters skillfully wrapped in a tale of romance, comedy, and film-noir detective mystery....Gotanda creates a funny, yet powerfully allegorical story of a rogue mobster who finds love in the darkest days of his life."
Harry (Shimono), a money-laundering accountant who has skimmed off his fair share from the menacing Mr. Jones (Gotanda), returns to his hometown of
San Francisco—where his grandfather was a Japantown laundryman—to die. Once there, he plans to gather together his grown son (Watanabe) and daughter (Tomita) and give them the stolen money to make up for his years of abandonment, then prepare himself a fatal meal of sautéed angel’s nightcap mushroom. Which will claim him first: the mushroom that also killed his wife or the weird Mr. Jones, whose lethal leather finger can point you to death and who snorts lemons like BLUE VELVET’S evil Frank sucked on oxygen? As he ponders his impending death, Harry falls in love with a mysterious beauty who scrubs away at a single spot on the floor and returns to fold his shirts and ply him with California rolls.
Thoroughly engaging and rich in humor—especially where it pokes fun at the Bay Area’s obsessions with cuisine, allergies, and bacteria—LIFE TASTES GOOD resembles the classic film TAMPOPO in the way its characters express their love and respect for food even in the clutches of death.
—Frako Loden
Presented with Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California, Asian American Theater Company and Film Arts Foundation