Three...Extremes (2004)

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HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2021

Directors: Fruit Chan, Park Chan-Wook, Takashi Miike

Writers: Park Chan-Wook, Haruko Fukushima, Pik-Wah Lee

Stars: Bai Ling, Lee Byung-hun, Kyoko Hasegawa, Pauline Lau, Im Won-hee, Atsuro Watabe



I was looking forward to seeing this film because of the good reviews I'd read and because I had seen very good work from Takashi Miike and Park Chan-Wook (I'd never heard of Fruit Chan before), but I was very disappointed. 



Miike's "Box" is the best of the bunch, a surreal psychological portrait of guilt with a startling image at the end. 



Chan's "Dumplings" is an obvious, simplistic morality play with an ending I could see from a mile away. 



(I wonder if it plays better for Chinese speakers. It occurred to me that this segment could function as a commentary on China's one-child policy, but this is not evident from the subtitles.) 



Park's "Cut" is a bizarre set-piece that provoked much discussion among the people I saw it with about exactly what happened and what it meant; the only thing we could all agree on was that this contrived mess wasn't worth the energy of the debate.













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