Japan’s Miike Takashi (Audition, Visitor Q), Korean Cannes winner Park Chan-wook (Old Boy) and Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan (Hollywood, Hong Kong) join forces to showcase their considerable skills in this creepy anthology triptych.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2005
Three... Extremes 2004
Three Asian directors with plenty of previous festival clout joined forces to showcase their considerable skills in one creepy anthology triptych. Japanese cine-maniac Miike Takashi (Audition, Visitor Q), Korean Cannes winner Park Chan-wook (Old Boy) and Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan (Hollywood, Hong Kong) deliver three monstrous tales with equal vigour. Surprisingly it’s Fruit Chan who serves up the most diabolical offering, called Dumplings, a film so good that it has been expanded into a feature-length version that we’re also showing. It’s a barbed and wickedly funny assault on the obsession with youth, lavishly photographed by the legendary Chris Doyle of Wong Kar-wai fame. Park’s Cut concerns a director who has just wrapped on a vampire flick, and returns home to find an intruder with a macabre and elaborately cruel plan involving his pianist wife and lots of razor wire. Cinematic outlaw Miike tones it down a notch for the final installment, Box, a spooky tale of magic acts and twin sisters, gorgeously lensed and hauntingly lyrical.