So after the initiated pan-Asian project Three, Applause Pictures (headlined by Peter Chan) gathered up an even hotter group of Asian directors to deliver a trio of horror stories within the feature film format. The selections were none others than Japan's Takashi Miike (Ichi The Killer), Hong Kong's Fruit Chan (Made In Hong Kong) and South Korea's Park Chan-Wook (Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance). With the first Three, despite talent involved, it was glaringly obvious that Peter Chan's Going Home was the most accomplished but since the talent level is so amped this time around, it's really Hong Kong's otherwise indie filmmaker Fruit Chan who is the outsider here. It's his contribution Dumplings that we're focusing on in this review, both the 37 minute short and the 91 minute feature edit available as a separate release (1*).

Dumplings (37 minutes)

Li (Miriam Yeung - Dry Wood Fierce Fire, Love Undercover) is a former TV-actress on the brink of turning older than she wants to admit. She enlists the services of Mainland woman Mei (Bai Ling - Anna And The King), called Aunt by her surroundings, as she is rumored to have a miracle cure that can retain youth. That miracle cure is the age old Chinese tradition of making dumplings, with the special ingredient of fetuses...

Based on screenwriters Lilian Lee's (Rouge) own novel and featuring another reunion of a crackin' behind the camera team consisting of cinematographer Christopher Doyle, production designer Hai Chung Man and costumer designer Dora Ng, Fruit Chan makes his entrance in something akin to the big league in disgusting but ultimately intriguing fashion. Chan firstly lives up the the theme of memories that has been running through Three even since its conception. With Dumplings it's youth-remembrance and Lilian Lee at the same times makes a current, true comment about the strife for perfection and youth, embodied in the most extremes of ways in and outside the movie-world. If you weren't turned off by dumplings after Herman Yau's The Untold Story, Fruit Chan and company surely have sealed anyone's decision after only 37 minutes.

It's so pleasing to watch Dumplings in many ways believe it or not though. Main one being the fact that it's very much feels like a Fruit Chan film, with suitable polish. The majority of the setting is in a run down apartment block, captured with a naturalistic but suitably gritty feel by ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle (also DOP on Going Home), adding more honed fluidity and oddly disgusting but beautiful composed images very much worthwhile and benefiting for Chan's storytelling. Hai Chung Man's production design, highlighted by the alluring sight of the cooked dumplings gets the full attention it deserves by Chan and Doyle also. You have quite a feast of gory images but Chan easily makes the viewer sick by just having characters talk of the cooking methods and also through Kinson Tsang's brilliant sound design.

And yet it is a short film that finds time for character and a message, even if Chan needs set character traits in stone right out of the gate. Miriam Yeung's Li not only has a serviceable arc for the short running time but it's a fitting tribute to Chan's skills to quickly and confidently set up her internal worry and conflict about losing her appeal, having once been hot TV property and in her husband's eyes (a grey haired Tony Leung Ka-Fai). Yeung confidently throws herself at the mercy of Chan, having little sympathy as a character as she can't accept life's evolution and she also escapes her comedy image easily. Which is one of the main concerns when any established actor or actress takes an odd genre leap. Bai Ling steals the show though with a seriously whacked out and also funny performance as Aunt Mei, apparently a very successful experiment of the brand of dumplings at hand here. Lilian Lee probably provided a simple note or two to Bai Ling; be an eccentric old lady in sexy, youth form, treating her chosen lifeline as an everyday business. Bai Ling lives up to that thoroughly in a wonderfully, quirky little act.

Again there's normally not much that can be said in 37 minutes but Fruit Chan pulls off a lot, including creating a thoroughly disgusting tale of a kind of greed in a main character that won't accept life slipping away from her. With his final iconic shots of Miriam Yeung, Fruit Chan exits, having created a questionably compelling short due to content but it's a entertaining one that sees Chan take a further important step up stylistically from his independent background (Hollywood Hong Kong started that climb). However, he's not fallen victim to commercialism. You simply aren't doing that when you're gleefully shooting a story about fetuses being used to make dumplings. Anybody hungry yet?

Dumplings (91 minutes)

But there's more...

Released theatrically around the same as Three... Extremes in Hong Kong, once again it's the only contribution to the anthology that has had an extended version. However there is such a wealth of new material at hand here compared to Going Home that Dumplings in some respects is very much a different and better movie. Within the approximately 54 minutes of added material there is some notable additions worth discussing but we won't go into spoiler territory as such.

As for screenwriters Lilian Lee's added playground, there are notable extensions of her comments towards today's beauty obsessed world (in one scene Mei talks about the content on commercial products being all lies) and the divulging of the usage of fetuses in Chinese history but really the biggest thematic exploration continues in Miriam Yeung's Li as she has a larger amount of time to build up the desperation for youth compared to the 37 minute edit. In many respects Dumplings becomes much more of a darker, twisted story with less of the twisted fun. But it's not a negative towards director Fruit Chan as he also clearly relishes the playing field along with crew such as Christopher Doyle (more odd and stomach churning shots for him) and Dora Ng (the new opening is an immediate showcase for the slightly quirky but sexy wardrobe choices for Bai Ling). Basically, a key point is that the narrative opens up the opportunity to be fuller and it is on a few key points.

Firstly there is more interaction outside of the main apartment between Li and Mei, going so far that Mei is allowed to visit the home of Li's that is currently under renovation. All at the same time as she's dealing with the knowledge of her husband's love affair with masseuse Connie (Meme). As this is more pronounced and a further catalyst for Li's craving for youth, it also means Tony Leung Ka-Fai is upgraded from special appearance to full on supporting role (and it means extended sex scenes and a brand new one!). A sleaze and full on asshole, Leung's marvelous presence is one of THE entertaining factors in this Dumplings. Early on we're even treated to the gruesome sight of him actually eating bird eggs in order to preserve his health and youth! It seems wife AND husband are obsessed in differently visible ways.

Talking Bai Ling's Mei again, she is given a more extensive background as it's explained she was a doctor in China at one point. Also she comes off as much more devious in this version, something highlighted within Three... Extremes but not as much. She contains a larger sexiness in combination with her eccentric nature and with that obviously enters more of a chilling character to boot. More Bai Ling is not a bad thing by any means. The same goes for Miriam Yeung who impresses even more when not given such a fast development. Best scenes being where she really relishes the positive effects the fetus-dumplings has on her. Finally of note is that there exist editorial decisions where some events are shifted around and we're also given a alternate conclusion for Miriam Yeung's character that doesn't really change an overall meaning but connects more to interactions with a larger part of the character gallery in this edit. I can also swear that Kinson Tsang's sound design is amped to new disgusting levels!

So lots and lots more there is in Dumplings, including more eating, but Fruit Chan maintains great interest throughout for reasons already clear in the 37 minute version. Watching essentially the same story stretched out by almost an hour makes the film slower in pace if you make it a double bill but in actuality, Dumplings is far more better realized at feature length, expanding the disgusting premise to not only Miriam Yeung and Bai Ling's characters. Even if Fruit Chan had only given us 37 minutes of his biggest project yet, it still would've meant happy days for fans of his. That his talents merge seamlessly with the bigger names Takashi Miike and Park Chan-Wook in full movie format is just icing on the cake.

Yet, audiences remain likely to walk away bemused because, despite the title, the Category III rating and the track record of two of the three directors (Miike and Park), this is more about extreme ideas than graphic imagery. 'Ichi the Killer' this is not. And while 'Three' embraced the supernatural, 'Three... Extremes' explores the realms of madness, obsession and violence.

'Box', the opening episode by Miike, is most likely to alienate the gore crowd; its sombre, surreal dream logic and difficult conclusion refusing to court an audience.

Kyoko (Hasegawa), a young writer, finds professional success a hollow comfort for the guilty secret she carries. A child contortionist, she performed a double act with her sister under the unsettling eye of their stepfather (Watabe). Envious of the stepfather's (paedophilic) love for her sister, Kyoko stages a prank that goes fatally awry. Now, years later, Kyoko receives a letter summoning her to the circus marquee once more for a reunion with her master... and sister.

Miike is in 'Audition' mood here. Low key and haunting with abstract imagery reflecting a mind distorted by guilt and obsession, 'Box' is one of the director's most confident films. Impeccably mounted and controlled, the story builds from fragments of memory accompanied by stretches of uncomfortable silence or regular Miike composer Koji Endo's haunting musical box melody, and the icy blues of Kyoko’s adult life are placed in stark contrast to the feverish ochre of her childhood.

Matching the disturbing visual colour scheme is the suggested relationship the girls have with their stepfather, whose obsession definitely strays into the arena of the unwell. Cinematic cousins here would be Haneke's 'The Piano Teacher', which also incorporated chilly visuals to tell the tale of a sexually traumatized heroine, and Lynch's 'Lost Highway' for sheer surrealism.

Likely to have viewers reluctant to venture any further, 'Box' proves international recognition thankfully has yet to temper Miike's wilful nature.

Another theme of 'Box' is women's preordained roles in society. The child sisters repeatedly squeeze into tiny wooden compartments at the behest of their cracked master. This theme of female subservience carries over into the next film, Fruit Chan's delirious, erotic and offensive 'Dumplings'.

Where Miike played it cerebral Chan opts for viscera to depict the extreme measures women choose to obtain eternal youth. Revealing the central conceit would spoil the film's morbid surprise, but Miriam Yeung is superb as a middle aged TV-personality, desperate to reclaim her youth and keep her wayward husband (Leung Kar Fei). Her mania takes her to the squalid apartment of Mei (Bai), and the rejuvenating dumplings for which Mei is famous. But, the "extra" ingredient is not the weak-stomached.

With flashes of horror and a soundtrack of "wet" effects, 'Dumplings' is a triumph of distressing body horror. Women's bodies and biology are put through the grinder, with an abortion scene one of the squirmiest moments of unpleasantness in recent memory, while the pay-off to Mrs. Lee's unholy quest for youth is a perfectly executed piece of social horror reminiscent of the best EC horror comic. Add a climactic moment of vaginal trauma akin to Kim Ki-duk's 'The Isle' and you have the ultimate anti-date movie.

But, 'Dumplings' is a fiery lick of horror with real guts to go with its gore. Chan and writer Lillian Lee comment on the huge class divide in contemporary Hong Kong, with the working class Mei committing vile atrocities to satiate the whim of the bourgeois Mrs. Lee, but claiming some class revenge with Lee's final social humiliation. Mei's claims to be far older than her looks and her renditions of Maoist songs while preparing the titular treats also add another layer to her relationship with Mrs. Lee.

Bai's performance reeks of evil and compromised values, but the revelation here is Yeung. Hitherto a Cantopop queen and star of inoffensive Hong Kong fluff, this is a brave change of pace for her. That she convinces as a maddened woman twenty years her senior is a testament to a talent not yet fully tapped.

'Dumplings' share many similarities with 'Going Home', the Hong Kong segment of 'Three'. 'Going Home's director Peter Chan is on producing duties here, and both films are also available in extended versions ('Dumplings' features an additional fifty minutes) and both boast breathtaking cinematography from the needs-no-introduction Christopher Doyle, whose good-enough-to-eat images and sumptuous sheen makes 'Dumplings' more disturbing than the cheerful grunge of 'The Untold Story' and its clones.

'Dumplings' themes of class war are focussed on in 'Three... Extremes' closing episode, 'Cut'.

Park's film is the most "mainstream" of the three, but won’t be playing the multiplexes anytime soon. 'Cut' tackles the horror staple of home invasion for a pitch black comic tale of social envy, class status and the debilitating influence of violence.

Park is responsible for the recently lauded 'Old Boy' and that film's skewed humour pulsates here, as does the class hatred savagely depicted in his previous 'Sympathy for Mr Vengeance'.

A handsome movie director (Lee) is taken hostage along with his beautiful pianist wife (Kang) by a crazed movie extra (Lim). The extra resents the director his handsome looks, perfect life, talent and status. To bring harsh reality into this charmed life, the extra plays a series of sadistically inventive games to ruin the purity of the man he both hates and idolizes.

Park borrows some CG visual flourishes from David Fincher's 'Panic Room' (another film about violence brought into the home), but 'Cut' is no mere hack and paste pastiche. Played out on a movie set designed after the director's home, it is an intense three-hander (or four counting a near mute child hostage), with the director kept at bay by a length of bungee rope and his wife memorably made into a piano puppet, bound by wires and with fingers glued to the keys.

The rules of the game are simple: perform a despicable act or one by one the wife loses her digits.

Located almost entirely on this one set, 'Cut' avoids a stagy dullness thanks to Park's keen directorial eye. A kinetic camera gleefully disorientates the viewer, dancing alongside Lim's virtuoso performance (complete with strange speech style apparently based on a local Korean dialect), while compositions alternate between wide-angle shots and uncomfortable close-ups.

As with other home invasion films such as 'Straw Dogs', 'Panic Room' and 'Funny Games', 'Cut' is about how middle-class pacifism will collapse when people are pushed too far, and how the violent impulses unleashed are difficult to control.

An eclectic and compelling triumvirate of screen darkness, it would be a shame if this marked the end of the 'Three' experiment. How about a film from female directors for the next instalment?

The fact that Three... Extremes: Dumplings is so creepy is all the more surprising since it's directed by Fruit Chan, who is known for weepy romantic dramas, not shocking thrillers. Chan does an excellent job here, though. I really have disliked Miriam Yeung in the films I've seen her in, but Chan actually makes her likeable here -- even though the actions she takes should make her anything but. In the movie, she plays an aging actress who comes to a former doctor (played by the smoking hot Bai Ling) who crafts dumplings filled with the "meat" of aborted fetuses, which return youth to the person who eats them. The dumplings become an addiction for Miriam, and soon she starts to go to any length to get them.

Despite the plot and the film's Category III rating, Three... Extremes: Dumplings is not a gore-fest ala The Untold Story. The movie does have its' share of unsettling moments (most notably an extended abortion sequence), but it's what the viewer does not see (and is left to their own imagination) that leaves its' mark. Three... Extremes: Dumplings is also genuinely sexy without being sleazy (Bai Ling's cleavage is such a thing of beauty to behold), and there is a good dose of ultra-black humor as well.

2004 has been kind of a strange year for Hong Kong movies. Many of the big-budget "epics" have failed to live up to the pre-release hype, but there have been many excellent films that have come in "under the radar", and Three... Extremes: Dumplings is another one of those movies. It's scary and sexy, but most importantly, it's fun -- in a twisted kind of way. This is the kind of movie western Hong Kong film fans love: something off-kilter which would never be produced in the United States. While the US seems content in cranking out dull PG-13 fare like the remake of The Grudge, thankfully Asian film-makers are still willing to take chances. Even if you're not normally into horror/suspense films, do yourself a favor and check this one out.

Helping Chan unleash the first of the trilogy at moviegoers is cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who has done some of the most visually brilliant films from Asia in the last 5 years (including Zhang Yimou's "Hero" and frequent collaborator Wong Kar Wai's "In the Mood for Love" and the upcoming "2046"). "Dumplings" is about a fallen starlet played by Miriam Yeung ("Anna in Kung-fu Land") who seeks help to reclaim her youth as well as her philandering husband (Tony Leung). Yeung's Ching finds salvation in Aunt Mei (Bai Ling), who despite the moniker is actually quite a fetching woman in her '30s (or so it seems) who makes frequent trips back to China where she collects the main ingredient in her secret recipe for restoring woman's youth.

The secret to Aunt Mei's "secret recipe" is her dumplings, which are made from the remains of aborted fetuses. Not to worry, as this plot point is quickly exposed, even if Ching refuses to accept it until much later. "Dumplings" is a cold, voyeuristic, and unsettling film, which seems to be the intention. The film, written by Lillian Lee, never goes out of its way to make us comfortable with its characters. Our distance to these three people is helped by the film's use of faraway shots and erratic scene framing. Each character is zeroed in on his or her own wants and needs, and it just so happens that those needs are intersecting.

As a way to forcibly make the audience keeps its distance from the characters, Chan and Doyle frames much of the film from slanted or uneven angles. Characters rarely stand firmly in the center of the mise-en-scene, and at times they wander so completely off frame that we become disoriented. As filmgoers, we are used to seeing people in focus and in frame, so it feels strange when the camera refuses to adjust to character movements. Of course the momentary confusion subsides, allowing us to appreciate the stylistic nature of "Dumplings". To be sure, it's a fabulously stylish film, from the bright colors of Aunt Mei's tight (oh so tight!) hot pants to Ching's preference of solid colors.

More social satire than horror film, "Dumplings" makes for an effective first movie in the planned 3-film anthology. I wouldn't be surprised if Chan's film proved to be the best of the three, as Peter Chan's own "Going Home" proved to be the best of the first "Three". Like that other Chan's movie, there is an offbeat sensibility to "Dumplings". The narrative is never completely coherent, although it's obvious what is happening. Towards the end, the film takes some liberties, skipping crucial plot points and failing to follow up on others. Having invested in the film up to this point, it all seems just a bit too much of a cheat to deny us some measure of resolution.

Of course the off-kilter story would never have worked without a good cast. Chan has picked brilliantly in Bai Ling, who has been doing recent big-budget Hollywood films in America since fleeing her native China, and was recently seen in the Jude Law sci-fi actioner "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow". Ling is almost unrecognizable here, with her boundless energy and enthusiasm for her dumplings. Although you're pretty sure you're not supposed to like her, you can't help but feel a bit of guilt because you just can't help yourself. Even when she's aborting a fetus before our eyes, Ling's Aunt Mei does it with such good humor that for a moment -- just a moment -- you almost mistake her enthusiasm for compassion.

As the lead, Miriam Yeung, who is actually only 30 in real life, really does look like a fading ex-starlet, which is rather amazing considering all the pointless romantic comedy films one usually associates her with. It's not even as if Chan and company covered her in prosthetic make-up. As far as I can tell, the only change Yeung's character goes through is Ching's sudden bursts of self-confidence. Do the dumplings actually make a difference, or is it a placebo effect? When it comes to Aunt Mei's own age, this question seems to have a readily obvious answer, but it's not so clear in Ching's case. Like much of "Dumplings", rather the dumplings actually work is open to interpretation.

As the first of a planned 3-movie rollout, the producers of "Three...Extremes" could do worst than Fruit Chan's "Dumplings". At once alien yet familiar, and uncomfortable yet inviting, "Dumplings" is one of those movies you know you shouldn't like, but you can't help yourself. It's a lot like Aunt Mei that way. You know you shouldn't approve of what she's doing, but it's hard to look away when she's walking around in tight hot pants and always seems to be playing with her bountiful cleavage.