Salarymen
2012 · 3m · Australia
Directed by Michael Shiao Chen
Tones: contemplative, tender
A dejected young office worker stumbles across a small ramen shop on his commute home and discovers the greatest ramen ever sold.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a three-minute ramen commercial disguised as existential drama, which is either the most boring premise imaginable or genuinely subversive—I genuinely can't tell, and that ambiguity almost saves it.
Chen situates this minor epiphany within a lineage of Japanese contemplative cinema and the aesthetics of mono no aware, executing the restraint with formal precision that elevates what could be sentimental into something genuinely meditative.
The entire film hinges on a single choice—how long to hold on the protagonist's face the moment he tastes the ramen—and Chen commits to the silence and stillness with such specificity that a three-minute animation about noodles becomes genuinely moving.