Dumplings (film)

Dumplings (Gaau ji)
Directed by	Fruit Chan
Produced by	Peter Chan, Eric Tsang
Written by	Fruit Chan, Lilian Lee
Starring	Miriam Yeung Tony Leung Ka Fai Bai Ling Pauline Lau Mi Mi Lee Miki Yeung
Music by	Kwong Wing Chan
Cinematography	Christopher Doyle
Editing by	Fruit Chan, Ki-hop Chan, Sam-Fat Tin
Distributed by	e-m-s the DVD-Company (Germany)
Release date(s)	August 4, 2004 Germany
Running time	91 min
Language	Cantonese, Mandarin

Dumplings (Chinese: 餃子; Pinyin: Jiǎozi; Jyutping: Gaau2zi2) is a 2004 Hong Kong horror film, directed by Fruit Chan. It was expanded from a short segment in the horror compilation, Three... Extremes.

It was premiered in the United Kingdom during the Cardiff Film Festival, on November 11, 2005.

Plot summary

A rich woman, Mrs. Li, is losing her good looks and longs for passion with her husband, who is later revealed to be having a love affair with his younger and more attractive masseuse. In order to boost her image, she seeks the help of Aunt Mei, a local chef. Mei cooks her some special dumplings which she claims to be effective for rejuvenation. From the very beginning, Mrs. Li was aware that Mei used unborn fetuses "imported" from the abortion clinic where Mei used to work. She keeps seeking more potent remedies, until one day she is in luck: Mei had just performed a black market abortion on a girl five months pregnant who has been impregnated by her father. After Mrs. Li sneaks a look in the kitchen and sees the fetus, she is initially disgusted and runs away, but later comes back. Mei makes the fetus into dumplings, which Mrs. Li devours. This has a wondrous effect on her libido as she goes into the hospital and has sex with her husband.

In a short flash-back, we are shown the girl and her mother riding a bus home after the abortion. After getting off, the girl collapses on the side-walk. With no one around, the mother can only watch as her daughter slips into unconsciousness. Muttering her last words, "I don't want to die..." she dies soon afterwards, presumably from a ruptured uterus.

Mrs. Li hosts a dinner party for her friends, who compliment her and wonder about her newly found beauty and youth. When she joins them, they claim there is a horrid fish-like smell in the air, which turns out to be from Mrs. Li herself. She excuses herself from the table and runs to the bath-tub. Furious with Mei, Mrs. Li calls her, demanding to know what she has ingested. Mei merely claims that an inbred child is the most potent. Curious at what his wife is yelling about, Mr. Li gets on the other line and overhears the conversation between her and Mei about what happened, and pays the latter a visit, inquiring into whether it really works. Mr. Li eats one of her dumplings and has violent sex with Mei, whom he finds out to be sixty-four years old, but with a form like a slender thirty-year-old woman. She attributes her looks to her cannibalism.

Soon, Mrs. Li realizes that she can not stay young without eating Mei's dumplings. Ignorant of her husband's love affair with Mei, she pleads with her to continue to find her the most potent ingredients for the dumplings and promises to pay her handsomely. Presumably a mistress of Mr. Li at that point, Mei ignores Mrs. Li's plea and tears her check into pieces.

The next morning, police officers arrive at an apartment, where they find the mother, crying, bloodied and clenching a knife. Upset about her daughter's death, she has stabbed her incestuous husband nearly to death. It is implied that upon finding the wife and the dead husband, the police find out Mei's identity and raid her apartment. Mei, how ever, has already fled. It is revealed that Mr. Li has impregnated his masseuse. When Mrs. Li catches word of this, she tracks down the pregnant masseuse, planning on having her abort the fetus. Although the young masseuse is comfortable with her pregnancy and wishes to have the child, Mrs. Li convinces her to have it aborted in exchange for a large sum of money. Mrs. Li insists to the doctor that the baby should come out alive. Mrs. Li then takes the fetus and turns it into dumplings, ingesting her husband's child. Mei, we learn, ends up selling dumplings on the streets in Shenzhen.

Differences from the version in Three... Extremes

Where as the extended version retains much of the plot from the short film in Three... Extremes, the endings differ. The short film focuses solely on Mrs. Li's quest for rejuvenated youth and does not include the masseuse or the subplot involving Mr. Li and Aunt Mei's love affair. Aunt Mei leaves her home for her own reasons, rather than due to a police raid. Consequently, in place of the masseuse's pregnancy, Mrs Li finds that she herself is two months pregnant with a child she was told she would never have. After learning she can no longer get dumplings from Aunt Mei, she decides to do some thing drastic in order to keep her youthful looks. The final scene is of Mrs. Li, in the bath-tub where she has just aborted her own fetus, licking blood from her cheek, having eaten her own child.

Cast

• Bai Ling as Mei
• Miriam Yeung as Mrs. Li
• Tony Leung Ka-fai as Mr. Li
• Pauline Lau as Masseuse
• Miki Yeung as Kate
• Mi Mi Lee

External links

• Dumplings at the Internet Movie Database
• Dumplings at AllRovi