Meshi to Otome

Food And The Maiden
It is told that Buddha had come to realize the meaninglessness of practicing asceticism when he ate a bowl of rice pudding offered by a village girl while he was in a lent. Buddha also left interesting words about eating, like “Most sufferings are caused by food”. Eating is a pleasure. But at the same time, it is the biggest burden of your life that you have to keep feeding yourself in order to live. FOOD AND THE MAIDEN is a story about three couples, each having a problem around eating.

Young girl SAORI, is a cook at a dining bar called COO. She loves cooking. There is a regular customer KUJO, a guy who has never touched the plate of her cooking. Saori decides to give him a bag of sandwiches for him to eat at home, but later she finds that he gave it to a Buddhist monk on a street. She does not know that Kujo only eats what he cooked himself. MIE is a bulimic lady living with her boyfriend KOHINATA, who does nothing but eat. She finds that she is pregnant. She asks her boyfriend if he wants to have the baby or have it killed. KOHINATA promises he is going to feed the baby. On that day he disappears. Mie tells her friends that she ate him. A middle-aged man KONAKA is in trouble running his business. He is concerned whether he can keep feeding his big-eater wife SAKIE and their teenage daughter YUMI. He has not eaten for days. One night, he loses control and empties Yumi ’ s lunch box for the next day. Konaka hides in a cardboard box, wishing to be mummified like a Buddhist high priest in the old days.
by Minoru Kurimura
with Mayu Sakuma, Rie Tamaka, Takae Okamura, Satoshi Kamimura
Japan 2010 75’

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