First Person
Director Fruit Chan is at the Venice Film Festival this week for a midnight screening of his new movie Dumplings, which is part of the horror triptych Three ... Extremes. It tells the story of a middle-aged beauty played by Miriam Yeung Chin-wah who tries to preserve her looks by eating dumplings made with a sinister, human, ingredient
If you asked women in the streets of Hong Kong if they would eat dumplings like the ones in my film, knowing it would make them more beautiful, I think they would reply 'why not try them?' There are some women out there who would definitely eat them.
In my film, the lead character is very, very scared when she tries the dumplings for the first time, knowing what the secret ingredient is. But slowly she begins to enjoy it because it improves her beauty. At first it is a struggle but when she sees herself in the mirror, it becomes easier.
I show how, step by step, the woman becomes dependent on the dumplings. Finally, when the woman's supplier disappears, she has nothing. Then she makes her husband's mistress have an abortion to eat the baby.
In Chinese society, some people really like to eat things like those I have shown in my movie. Some people believe that if you eat an animal's nose, your own nose will become very sensitive. If you eat the eyes from a cow, your eyes will be bright. If you eat a monkey's brain you will be wiser.
When I first started to make this movie [based on a short story by Lillian Lee] I went to see some doctors from China. They are experts on abortion and they know what happens. Many women believe if you eat the placenta after birth it can make you healthier. People eat it for Chinese medicine. They tell me it is common. Some people also like to eat mouse foetuses. But eating human foetuses is rare, I think.
It is a real situation, though, and not just in China. In some parts of Vietnam and the Philippines they like to eat placentas and fertilised eggs from a woman. It is not just women who eat them but also men who believe it improves their virility.