A notable nod to noir with ‘Life Tastes Good’
By Julie Brown-Micko

Why hasn’t someone thought of this before? Food and film noir are a natural combination. How many times have you seen the overworked, rumpled cop chowing down on Chinese take-out in his rusted car? Or the bleach-blond bad-guy snarf down a donut as he picks up the weekly payment? And, of course, don’t forget the anti-hero, the mystery man who drinks Styrofoam cup after Styrofoam cup of weak, bad coffee as he drives around his beloved city, fighting insomnia and his troubled past.

Philip Kan Gotanda has combined all these elements and more in the delightfully offbeat homage to film noir, Life Tastes Good. His superhuman efforts to act, direct, write and produce the film only adds to the singularity of vision. Strange, slow-moving and liberally peppered with eccentric humor, Life Tastes Good takes a humble, fresh approach to cinematic storytelling.

It all begins as two cops calmly investigate a dead body found in a car. As they begin their examination of the corpse they realize that the blood has not yet started to pool in the extremities, but the man’s face looks as if he’s been rotting in the car for weeks. They recover a wallet, a tape recorder, and… one beautiful, fresh-from-the-market lemon. And so the mystery begins to unfold.

The voice on the tape recorder is that of Harry Sado (Sab Shimono), a small-time crook who has returned to San Francisco a broken man. Not only has he double-crossed his partner in crime, Mr. Jones (Philip Kan Gotanda), but also he is terminally ill. He rents a warehouse space to spend a few days straightening up his affairs—all he wants to do is cook a few meals and make contact with his estranged children. But will Mr. Jones or the illness get him first? And what about the mysterious beautiful woman (Julia Nickson-Soul) who visits the warehouse space at odd hours of the day and night, endlessly scrubbing a long-gone bloodstain in the floor?

Cinematography is loving and spare. The bare warehouse space lends itself perfectly to the play of light and shadow, particularly in the sun-filled kitchen. Misty dreams of the past are shot in silent black and white, with the fuzzy borders of imperfect recollection. But occasionally the film has moments that teeter dangerously on the edge of ridiculous. In particular, a family dinner involving copious vomiting veers into Monty Python territory. Thankfully, the hammy, lemon-loving villain Mr. Jones always seems to appear just when we need a little lift.

It’s not fast, nor action-packed. But there are plenty of thoughtful, understated examinations of food and love to make Life Tastes Good worth a try. And, can you think of any other movie in which a day-old baguette has been used as a weapon, kung-fu style? Brilliant.