Rating: 3.5/5
Hooptober 2.0 | 12/31 | Takashi Miike 2/5
Three East Asia directors put forth their contributions to the Extreme Asia fad. Two are brilliant works that highlight their respective filmmaker’s strengths. The other is fine but lacks the precise eloquence of the others.
Dumplings (Fruit Chan) **
Northerners always say, “Good feelings come from a nap. Good taste comes from a dumpling.”
Mrs. Li takes a car to a poorer neighborhood in Hong Kong. With her elegant red dress and designer sunglasses, she could not stand out more. She rings the bell of an apartment with barred windows and a gated front door.
There, Mrs. Li meets Aunt Mei, known for her expensive dumplings. Mei recognizes Mrs. Li from TV, though she hasn’t acted in some years. Mrs. Li guesses Mei is in her thirties, but Mei claims to be much older. Her secret? The dumplings.
Mei uses the best ingredients — high gluten flour kneaded to the perfect thickness, freshly chopped cabbage, and a translucent red and pink protein. If Mrs. Li were to learn what it was, would it stop her from eating them? How much would she do to achieve youthful beauty?
The meditation on the cooking process reminds me of Studio Ghibli, but the ominous music and unusual filling add a sinister edge.
Fruit Chan and screenwriter Lilian Lee based this story on an HK exposé on notorious underground markets, and Chan’s personal experience. I can’t talk about much more without spoiling the story.
The cast and crew returned to make a full-length version of this story, which I’ve heard is pretty gross. This short is quite graphic but relies more on insinuation.
Cut (Park Chan-wook) *** A woman consumes a frozen man’s blood. Her phone rings, so she removes her metal fangs to answer. She sits down to play the piano. Her stomach doesn’t agree with her meal, so she collapses on the floor, the piano still playing, and vomits up blood.
The camera pulls back to reveal a movie set and crew filming the whole thing. The director walks backstage, answering crew questions, and belittles an actor in drag. He gives a coworker a ride to Seoul before returning to his elaborate mansion. Someone knocks him out.
When he wakes, he finds a man putting his wife into an elaborate trap. The man is connected to the director’s life. Is the director able to fulfill the man’s request?
This short excels mostly in its aesthetics — the color, costumes, and sets are all immaculate and considered. I missed something because we go to the director’s house but he wakes up on the set from earlier. The camera makes no pretense of hiding it — he even goes backstage at one point.
If you thought Saw traps had flimsy motivations, this will annoy you. There isn’t anything here beyond shock and visual symmetry.
Box (Takashi Miike) ** Snow falls outside. A face moves under a tarp. A man buries a box.
Kyoko wakes up from the nightmare. She meets with Yoshii, her publisher, in an office building. She touches his face in disbelief before handing him a manuscript. He gifts her a music box for her success as an author.
As he leaves, he sees a woman standing in the hallway closet. When he approaches her, she backs into the closet. He looks inside and she is gone. Kyoko also sees the woman and believes she is her deceased sister, Shoko.
The box is too small. I can’t breathe.
With these mysterious fragments, we enter Kyoko’s troubled past as a circus performer. Can she rectify her childhood mistakes?
Japan in winter is so gorgeous, so the exteriors are effortlessly breathtaking. But the images that Miike assembles are so striking. The subjectivity of the experience is disorienting but comes together eloquently.
Yesterday, I developed a theory that Miike would be a better director if he worked in shorter forms. This segment is a sound argument in its favor, as it draws on his depraved inclinations while ending at a high point.