Wickedly delicious and sinfully satisfying, Fruit Chan's fifth film is a delightfully squirm-inducing voyage through the nightmarish perils of vanity. Featuring a stellar cast of Bai Ling, Miriam Yeung, and Tony Leung Kar-Fai, and the sumptuous cinematography of Christopher Doyle (Hero), Dumplings is a film sure to delight, shock, and offend. Mei (Ling) is a trashy former abortion doctor who supplies high-paying clients with “special dumplings” notorious for their youth-renewing powers. Qing (Yeung) is a former soap actress attempting to win back her philandering husband (Leung). Regular meals at Mei's apartment only whet her appetite for eternally smooth skin, and trigger an ominous search for an even more potent variety of the dumplings' secret ingredient. The ingredient in question, while appalling, is only a warm-up to the twisted moral and cosmic consequences that govern their universe. In his best film to date, Chan masterfully holds a mirror up to the increasingly frightening world around us.