Three… Extremes
(2004) 125 Min.
Rated: R
Country: Hong Kong / Japan / South Korea
Director: Fruit Chan, Takashi Miike, Chan-wook Park
Stars: Bai Ling, Byung-hun Lee, Kyoko Hasegawa
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★★☆
Three short films directed by three talented Asian directors.
Synopsis:
Dumplings (Dir. Fruit Chan)
Aging Actress Mrs.Li goes to a seedy building secretly in order to buy dumplings from an “Aunt Mei” who appears youthful, but claims to be much older.
Mrs.Li eats the dumplings as Aunt Mei sings for her. Meanwhile, unknown to her, Mrs.Li’s husband is having sex with a young mistress.
Mr.Li goes on a business trip. Mrs.Li asks Aunt Mei for a more potent dumpling that will make her young faster. Aunt Mei then tells her that the best dumplings are made from ones that are in the fifth month. Aunt Mei’s trips t the hospital are getting more dangerous. Fortunately, a young girl comes to Aunt Mei’s house with her mother and she performs an abortion.
Mrs.Li sneaks a peek as Aunt Mei prepares the fetus for consumption and is at first disgusted, but then steels herself to return and eat the meal. She feels like new and finds that her husband broke his leg. She goes back home and seduces him.
The young girl who had her abortion ends up bleeding to death later in the streets.
Mrs.Li prepares a dinner party for her friends, but they start to smell a fishy odor and Mrs.Li realizes she has a rash on her neck and hand. She takes a bath and calls Aunt Mei.
Aunt Mei reveals that the fetus was hard to get and a very rare one. It’s father was also it’s grandfather. A cursed child of incest. Aunt Mei assures her that that means the dumpling was extra potent.
Mrs.Li goes to the doctor and finds that she’s two months pregnant. Meanwhile, the mother of the girl who died tries to kill her husband with a meat cleaver.
Mrs.Li returns to Aunt Mei’s home only to discover that the police are there investigating and Aunt Mei has vanished. Mrs.Li returns home and performs an abortion on herself with a wire. She is shown in a last scene eating dumplings.
Cut (Dir. Chan-wook Park)
A film director named Ryu Ji-ho goes home and is abducted along with his wife to a set where an extra holds them both hostage. He has been in all five of the director’s films but is unrecognizable because of his small parts in the films.
The Stranger admits that he’s jealous of the director for being rich while he grew up poor and was beaten by his drunkard dad. He grew up to be a drunk and beat his wife and child too.
He tells the director to choke a young tied up girl to death otherwise every five minutes he’ll chop off one of his wife’s fingers. She doesn’t want him to, so the director resists. The Stranger starts to chop off her fingers one by one.
He asks the Director to admit to something bad and tells the Director that he killed his wife before he came to take them hostage. The Director admits he has been sleeping with a wardrobe girl, Kyung-Ah for the last three years.
He goes into a long rant on how the Kyung-Ah is smart and so unlike his wife. Mi-ran, his wife, only cares about shopping and plastic surgery. The Director tells Mi-ran that she can’t even really play the piano and she never cooks so all she uses her hands for is wearing jewelry.
The Stranger says that Mi-ran is also having an affair with a tenor she plays the piano for. The Director, however, was already aware of it.
The Stranger takes three of the cut fingers and puts them in a blender. The Director, in a fit, chokes the girl, but then realizes it’s a boy, the Stranger’s son who he couldn’t kill.
The Stranger then decides to cut off Mi-ran’s hand and as he walks over, trips and falls onto Mi-ran who then bites his jugular vein causing the Stranger to bleed to death.
The boy cries that he’ll have revenge on them. The Director then goes over to Mi-ran, delusional and believing she is the boy, and chokes her to death.
Box (Dir. Takashi Miike)
A writer named Kyoko is haunted by a past. She has a reoccurring dream of being trapped in a box. She is a successful novelist and her editor, Yoshii, gives her a music box as a gift.
Kyoko sees a person who looks like her sister in the hall, and tries to talk to the spirit. She pleads with her that things didn’t happen as she thinks.
In the past her and her sister Shoko were dancers in a circus and part of an act where they would get in boxes, get locked in and then disappear from the boxes in front of an audience. One day Shoko is rewarded with a necklace with a blue jewel. She tells Kyoko that if she tries she’ll be rewarded too. Their caretaker Higata looks exactly like Yoshii.
One day she sees Shoko lean into the box while practicing and she locks her sister into the box. Kyoko tells her that she wants her to stay there because she wants to be her just for one night and be favored by Higata. Higata comes in and sees what Kyoko has done and slaps her. She grabs a dart and scratches his face in retaliation. She backs away from him and knocks over a heater full of fuel that spills across the boards and onto the box, which instantly ignites in flames. Higata goes to help Shoko in the box, but it’s too late and the entire tent they live in is in flames with only Kyoko escaping.
One day she receives an invitation and follows it out to the circus. The tent is empty except for a burnt area on the stage and the box. Kyoko apologizes to the box and she opens it, horrified at what it contains. As she backs up, Higata appears behind her. He forces her to look upon Shoko’s body. He calms her and gives her a necklace and kisses her. She kisses him in return eagerly, he then puts a plastic sack over her and puts her into the box to bury her.
Kyoko wakes up again as if from a dream. Shoko is with her. Kyoko says that in reality they have been together since birth. She gets up and it’s shown that she and Shoko are conjoined twins.
Review:
Three talented directors. All three are masterful storytellers and each has a unique visual style. Chan-wook Park is most well known for Oldboy (2003) but has also done films like Stoker (2013). Takashi Miike is also well known for films like Audition (1999) and Ichi the Killer (2001).
Dumplings seems to be a commentary on women and their role in Chinese/Hong Kong society. The pressure to be beautiful and young as well as the difficulties of being young and pregnant. None of the subjects are thoroughly explored, but they are brought up and dealt with painfully. Mrs. Li, in this case, becoming more like a monster that feeds on fetuses. She is now a cursed creature with an insatiable appetite.
The pacing was nice and the cinematography was well executed. Loving shots of the dilapidated buildings of Hong Kong and the small apartment of Aunt Mei juxtaposed with the lavish house Mrs.Li lived in. It was quite a chilling story but beautifully shot.
Cut was more of a minimalist approach. Aside from the opening scene the entirety of the film takes place on a stage replication of the director’s home. Only three actors, well four if you include the child, make up the entirety of the dialogue.
Well shot, with close-ups and wide shots, it was highly stylized. This short played more on dark humor and style over substance. Cut also happened to be the more gruesome of the three films with fingers being cut off and stuck in a blender.
Cut may have had some sort of commentary on class structure in Korea or the pressures of being a director, but it wasn’t fully developed. Instead the film focused on keeping things darkly comedic and also gory.
Finally, Box seemed to be more of an atmospheric piece. It was slow and methodical, weaving a fairy-tale of sorts. It’s dream-like with the circus motif and flashbacks between the past and dream.
Box certainly felt like the more artsy film of the trio. It also happened to have a few scenes where I genuinely felt a bit creeped out. It wasn’t as gory as the other two films, but there was something menacing and foreboding that edged it’s way in.
Over all, I feel like this is a must-watch for any fan of the horror-genre or fans of Asian Horror in particular. These films certainly have a tone much different than American horror and it’s quite refreshing. No jump-scares to be found, and that’s a good thing.