Three Extremes II (2002) – DVD

3 Extremes II
**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
Memories ***½/****
starring Kim Hye-Soo, Chung Bo-Seok
written and directed by Kim Jee-woon
The Wheel **/****
starring Suwinit Panjamawat, Komgichi Yuttiyong, Pongsanart Vinsiri
screenplay by Nitas Singhamat
directed by Nonzee Nimibutr
Going Home **½/****
starring Leon Lai, Eric Tsang, Eugenia Yuan
screenplay by Jojo Hui/Matt Chow
directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The vogue for Asian pop culture is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we have irrefutable proof that, aside from maybe that of France, Asian cinema has eclipsed the West's in terms of consistency, potency, and sheer aesthetic brio. And yet, the fact that so much of Asia's more subdued product is often shunted aside for the nasty, brutish, and weird has certain negative consequences. Trolling the shelves of my local indie video store, I was a bit distressed to discover a second-tier Japanese "extreme" title insultingly promoted as being from "The Most Perverted Country on Earth"–a conclusion to which you might not jump if you peppered your Takashi Miike viewings with some Naomi Kawase or Hirokazu Kore-eda. Would you judge American culture entirely through the prism of Larry Flynt and Hostel? Does Italian film begin and end with Cannibal Holocaust and Strip Nude for Your Killer?

Still, one has to keep things in perspective. Just because the fanboys don't cotton to Yang or Tsai or Im Kwon-taek doesn't mean the extremities lack merits: the trio behind Three… Extremes–Miike, Park Chanwook, and Fruit Chan–is indeed a hard act to follow. Volume Two (actually the first volume, docking on DVD with a sequelized title after the cult success of the second) was probably inevitable, and while the names on the bill are not quite so large on these shores, one nevertheless gets a sense of the good, the bad, and the middling in what's been lumped into the genre. By "good" I mean Kim Jee-woon's Memories, a startling, prismatic Last Year at Seoul that uses chronology and structure to brilliant effect; by "bad," I mean the flaccid Wheel, a supernatural tale with little up its sleeve. Falling under "middling," the hit-or-miss Going Home is better as an idea, although the execution is not without its charms. To appreciate any of these short subjects, you have to be able to look past the genre to what's inside.

For instance, Memories is less good for what makes it "extreme" than for what makes it a post-modern memory piece. Like his superb A Tale of Two Sisters, the film deals with buried trauma and psychological denial–in this case, a woman (Kim Hye-su) wandering the streets, having forgotten her own name. Her husband (Jeong Bo-seok), who can't recall why she left in the first place, has meanwhile found a dead body in the trunk of his car and doesn't know how it got there. Thus our lady pieces things together from a phone number on a cleaning bill as our man draws a blank. It's obvious that neither one really wants to remember the horrible events leading to these circumstances, and it's only a matter of time before the bubble bursts and the truth rears its ugly head.

With its themes of amnesia and clue-sifting, the film bears a generic similarity to Memento. But it's less about semiotic navigation and more about guilty repression–the truth of which spells disaster for the couple, a fact telegraphed throughout: we live in dread of learning what happened even as we breathlessly await the outcome. Again as with Kim's subsequent A Tale of Two Sisters, the film is about hiding bad news from oneself, and by getting us to identify with two blanked-out protagonists, he turns us into at once guilty sinners and helpless victims. His crystalline presentation is brilliant at trapping them in space, framing them in confinement and generally ratcheting up the tension before the revelation to a deliciously unbearable level.

Coming after this triumph, Nonzee Nimibutr's The Wheel was bound to be a letdown. But it has bigger problems than its proximity to greatness. It's the tale of what happens when a dead puppeteer's puppets aren't treated with respect–which is to say, what happens when fire, drowning, and possession befall the local puppet-profaners. Despite the efforts of Gaan (Suwinit Panjamawat), the flippant steamroller who figures he can casually save his village from reprisals, the puppets keep wreaking vengeance. But despite the lively goings-on, Nimibutr can't seem to enliven the proceedings: instead of a mythological tale of dread and foreboding, he's turned in a second-rate episode of "Night Gallery". Rather like his epic Jan Dara, which used copious amounts of sex to anti-erotic effect, this offers all manner of flesh-rending to a shrug of the shoulders and a big "so what?"

On its own terms, the film is sort of watchable, bathed from the first to the last in a golden glow that's quite pleasant, if not especially artistic. "Quite pleasant," though, is nothing you want to hear when you're dealing with homicidal puppets–and the film is simply too placid to offer the shock or dramatic tension you really desire. This wouldn't be so bad had Nimibutr had something else on his mind, especially on the heels of Kim demonstrating what you can accomplish formally and thematically by digging below the surface. The basic narrative thread is all Nimibutr has in his arsenal and he's powerless to give it anything but the most rudimentary interest. It's quite something to say that a movie so full of carnage washes over you like nothing, but the only extreme explored here is one of apathy.

Somewhat of a rebound is Peter Ho-sun Chan's Going Home. At least the filmmakers are reasonably clever: they come up with a lovely Grand Guignol premise and trust it to play out. While searching for his missing son, policeman Wai (Eric Tsang) blunders into the apartment of Yu (Leon Lai), only to become his hostage. It turns out that Yu is tending to the care of his wife Hai'er (Eugenia Yuan), who died of cancer three years previous; Wai must therefore submit to the maniacal jabberings of his captor, who intends to raise her from the dead through the miracle of Chinese medicine. Wai is forced to befriend this lunatic if he wants to escape, although the police might catch him sooner rather than later.

The potential for this concept–and the tragic eleventh-hour information that Yu might not be so crazy after all–is undermined somewhat by the execution. One would need verbal fireworks to enliven the tête-à-têtes between captor and captive, but though Tsang and Lai are perfectly cast, their dialogue ranges from functional to maudlin. Yu's heartfelt confessions register as Rod Serling soap opera as opposed to the moving drama they're meant to be. That said, everybody appears to be firing all cylinders (if the engine is a little lacking in power), and the segment rallies in the final scenes, where dialogue is less important and the melancholy of the story is allowed to overpower you. Once again, the success of the film has less to do with the "extreme" concept than it does with how much the filmmakers connect with their themes–and if the end result is mild, it does succeed on its own terms.

THE DVD
Maple's disc, configured identically to Lionsgate's stateside release, features a credible 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The image could be sharper, but the colours are fairly vivid (especially in The Wheel). The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is equally good, best in Memories with its surround-flooding score. The Wheel and Going Home have less complex mixes but score high in terms of clarity and timbre. The only extras are trailers for Three… Extremes, Audition, Ju-On, Infection, Premonition, Satanic, Caved In: Prehistoric Terror, and See No Evil.

129 minutes; NR; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced); Various DD 5.1, Various DD 2.0 (Stereo); English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Lionsgate/Maple