Dumplings

Dumplings started life as one of the contributions to the Asian horror compendium Three Extremes, and was then expanded into a feature film - and for all its qualities, Fruit Chan's film never manages to avoid feeling overstretched. For it is essentially a short film whose duration, like that of its two main characters, has been unnaturally lengthened.

Accordingly, the only real extra on this dvd - an interview with lead Bai Ling - may sound short at a mere 20 minutes, but in fact seems to make time stop. The young actress talks at length about her charmingly goofy philosophy ("People ask me where you from, I say I come from the Moon, I say I like Earth, I visit here, I like it, I decide to stay, and sometime in the weekend I go back to change the wardrobe, come back again..."), but the problem is that she says very little about the film itself (apart from declaring with a smile that on one particularly hot day on set "I was prepared to commit suicide").

The fault lies partly in the questions that she is asked (e.g. "What attitudes have you encountered towards youth and beauty?", "what inspires you in life?", etc.). Bai Ling is clearly given to abstract musings, and a more focussed line of questioning might have reined in some of her more abstruse reflections. Still, at least it IS a good laugh.