You must start from inside for the best result. Only my secret formula can do this. Mrs. Li, think of the results. Not what it was.
Fruit Chan’s Dumplings first saw the light of day as one of three short films packaged together as Three . . . Extremes. Chan then expanded the story and released it as a feature length film with some changes to the ending. I wasn’t that impressed with Dumplings when I saw it as part of Three . . . Extremes, so I went into this film not expecting a whole lot, though I was curious to see how Chan would expand the story. I actually enjoyed this film more than I thought I would. The basic premise of the story is the same, and Chan even reuses a lot of footage from the short film; an actress entering middle age seeks out dumplings sold by a mysterious woman, dumplings which promise to restore youth. But, you know, don’t ask what’s in them. I thought the original short basically had the one idea, which is worth exploring of course, about the pressure on women to maintain physical beauty as they age and spent the bulk of its time just being gross and breaking taboos for the fun of it. Expanded here, Chan has the time to get into a lot of thematic material that just didn’t come across in the original short. There are definite elements of the class divide being explored and I particularly liked the extra development given to the actress’s husband. The film goes more into the relationship between Mrs. Li and Mei and the way they’re both kind of using each other as a vehicle for class tourism as well as all the other things they’re doing. And the film also puts the horror elements in the larger context of China’s one-child policy and getting that particular key kind of unlocked the movie for me. In the original short, I feel like that never came up at all, but seeing that policy being discussed here kind of made me understand the reasons that the writer, Lillian Lee, and Fruit Chan wanted to tell this story in this way. I think the longer and more in-depth treatment really helped me see past all the taboo breaking to get at why exactly this story exists and, in this longer version, it’s definitely not a film about crossing lines just for the nasty thrill of it. No, there’s a lot more going on here. The movie still has some problems. Obviously, it’s not for the faint of heart as it’s even more graphic than the short was in its depictions of . . . well, you know. Once again, though, the film doesn’t quite know where to go at the end of the day. The weakest part of the original short was that final shot, which was more comical than anything, and so I was curious to see how they’d fix that here. Well, the final shot here is not as ridiculous as the final shot of the short, but, man, it’s pretty close. Still, I enjoyed this one more than I thought I would and it’s instructive to see how a short that seemed pretty shallow and juvenile can blossom into a layered, thoughtful piece with a little more time to develop the themes. 3 stars.
tl;dr – feature-length adaptation of a short film has time to develop the themes and characters in an effective way; improves on just about every element of the original short. 3 stars.