Screened as part of NZIFF 2005

Three... Extremes 2004

Directed by Fruit Chan, Park Chan-wook, Miike Takashi

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.

Hong Kong / Japan / Korea In Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin with English subtitles
125 minutes 35mm

Screenplays

Lillian Lee, based on her novella. Park Chan-wook. Fukushima Haruko, based on a story by Saiko Bun

Photography

Christopher Doyle
,
Chung Chung-hoon
,
Kawakami Koichi

Editors

Tim San-fat
,
Chan Ki-hop
,
Kim Sang-bum
,
Kim Jae-bum
,
Shimamura Yasushi

Music

Chan Kwong-wing
,
Peach
,
Endo Kouiji

With

Bai Ling
,
Miriam Yeung
,
Lee Byung-hun
,
Lim Won-hee
,
Hasegawa Kyoko
,
Watabe Atsuro

Festivals

Venice, Pusan 2004; Sundance, Rotterdam, San Francisco 2005

Elsewhere

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.