Dumplings

Film description

A former TV star, elegant and wealthy Mrs Li, feels that she is growing old: her skin is losing its glow and her husband no longer pays attention to her. That is why she visits Mei’s shabby flat where one can try her famous, allegedly rejuvenating dumplings. What is their mysterious ingredient and where will Mrs Li get in her pursuit of beauty? What secret does the attractive chef hide?

Brilliant photography by Christopher Doyle and Fruit Chan’s confidence as a director with a perfect feeling for horror convention make "Dumplings" an exceptionally delectable horror and a particularly horrifying culinary movie, telling a story about an extremally risky art of cooking. The anxiety which this treaty on human vanity invokes makes it difficult to stop thinking about the film even long after the screening. And it will take a while until you dare to taste meat-filled dumplings again…

Originally the film was shown as a segment of „Three… Extremes” (together with etudes by Takashi Miike i Park Chan-wook), then its longer version began to be shown as a self-standing movie, successfully competing with Japanese and South Korean horrors, which at the beginning of the 21st century offered viewers new dimensions of fear. Fruit Chan’s expedition towards the mainstream of the genre turned out to be rewarding and showed how incredibly suggestive the director can be on the level of style.

Marcin Krasnowolski