Three…Extremes

Directed by Fruit Chan, Takashi Miike, and Chan-wook Park
Lions Gate Films
4 1/2 STARS

If the phrase, “A woman tries to stay young by eating fetuses,” makes you nauseous, stay far away from “Three…Extremes.”

But, if you’re willing to endure extreme close-up shots of fetuses in various stages of development—a still-birth, and a self-administered abortion—your tolerance will be well rewarded.

“Three…Extremes” is actually a cross-cultural trilogy of short films, with no plot or character elements in common, varying widely in tone. The first short, “Dumplings,” by Hong Kong director Fruit Chan, horrifies by suggesting its premise—a woman eating babies—is entirely realistic. The Korean film by director Chan-wook Park, “Cut,” is black comedy descending into madness. Japanese director Takashi Miike directs “Box,” a delirious psychological nightmare. They all succeed brilliantly in extraordinarily different ways.

“Dumplings”—shortened from a full-length movie of the same name—is by far the most graphically disgusting of the three. Mei (Bai Ling) smuggles aborted fetuses into Hong Kong to make age-defying culinary delicacies. Her customer is Mrs. Lee (Miriam Yeung), a retired actress who is desperate to regain her lost youth and stop her husband’s rampant cheating.

The segment transcends its shocking moments to become a nearly believable satire on the mania to stay young forever. Eating babies is slightly more extreme than injecting poison into your forehead, but the theme rings true. It has the strongest storytelling and characterization of the three shorts, and its feature-length origins are clear.

“Dumplings” is linked with the second segment, “Cut,” by a crunching, slurping, sucking sound that begins as Mrs. Lee eating and becomes the sound of a vampire feeding. The vampire is in a horror movie directed by the main character of the segment, who sets the movie in an apartment that looks just like his house. This and other bits of meta trickery lend a self-mocking element to the short, but it becomes horrific when a disgruntled extra imprisons the director, ties up his wife just out of reach, and threatens to cut off one of her fingers every five minutes unless the director strangles a child.

There’s plenty of blood and more humor in this short than one would expect. The brightly saturated colors and swooping camera work—as well as the relatively non-menacing villain—make it difficult to take the situation too seriously, and it becomes a black comedy in the vein of “American Psycho.” It succeeds in making viewers simultaneously laugh and cringe, but because it is the longest piece even though it takes place in one room and has fairly repetitive character interactions, it overstays its welcome.

“Box” is the segment that is both most affecting and hardest to describe. The story, in its bare outline, is that a novelist accidentally killed her twin sister in a horrific way when they were young circus performers. She is plagued by recurring dreams in which she is buried alive in the same small box in which her sister died. Elements of her dream spill over into her life, and her sister starts appearing to her—or is just a manifestation of a guilty conscience?

The imagery throughout is so dreamlike and beautiful, if creepy (those with a phobia of overly-realistic dolls and circus performers are hereby warned), and the structure loops back on itself so many times, that it is impossible to tell what is a dream and what, if anything, is real. All the characters are impassive until they are physically attacked, making them impossible to read, which heightens the sense of uncertainty. There are no jump-in-your-seat moments, but the overall effect is profoundly unsettling.

There is a resolution to the question of what is dream and what is real, but it is so strange and unexpected that it simply adds another layer to the already disturbing nature of the short.

If you’re the type of person who watches horror movies, this is the epitome of the genre: it scares, it shocks, and it stays with you long after you’ve left the theatre. It also transcends the genre to explore themes of aging, love, and guilt. But, to be blunt, if you don’t like horror, this is not for you. And even if you’re a genre aficionado, once you’ve experienced the outer limits of this movie’s disturbed psyche, you’ll probably never want to watch it again.