Three… Extremes
A trio of top-flight directors—Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan (Made in Hong Kong), South Korea’s Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), and Japan’s Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer)—brought their talents to this excellent but harrowing three-part anthology in 2004. The segments concern the youth-rejuvenating powers of aborted fetuses (“Dumplings”), a director (Squid Game’s Lee Byung-hun) menaced by a very disgruntled extra (“Cut”); and an ex-circus performer who can’t escape the twisted nightmare of her past (“Box”). In case you couldn’t tell, the promise of “extremes” is not false advertising.
