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Audition (1999)

Reviewed by Matt
Posted on July 30, 2005 
Filed Under Asian movies, Slashers

It’s not particularly surprising that the current bandwagon for US remakes of Japanese horror films hasn’t yet reached the work of director Miike Takashi, and in particularly his most notorious movie, Audition. Whilst it’s probably true to say that anything American cinema can do, Asian cinema can do in a way that’s altogether more psychologically upsetting, most people probably won’t be prepared for the astonishing brutality of the film’s final reel, which is almost unparalleled in its impact on the viewer. Whilst there have been much gorier films, there can be few that lull their audience into such a false sense of security - almost boredom - before assualting them with horrendous imagery.

The plot, such as it is, concerns a widowed film producer called Aoyama, who is persuaded by his son to remarry. With the help of a colleague, he cooks up a scheme to audition girls for a role in a fictitious movie as a ploy to meet women who match his criteria. Sure enough, he meets the quiet, fragile, beautiful Asami, with whom he rapidly falls in love, despite warnings from his son and colleague who are suspicious of this “untraceable” woman. But when the true extent of Asami’s damaged past is revealed, things go very very wrong for Aoyama indeed…

There’s not really much more to the story than that, but Miike deliberately keeps things almost tortuously slow in order to give the horrible conclusion its huge impact. The first two-thirds are really a romantic melodrama that doesn’t appear to be going anywhere in a particular hurry; but it sows many of the seeds for an ending that’s unexpected but (almost) logical. The whole audition ploy is quite unpleasant in its cynicism, although Aoyama does appear to be a rather reluctant participant in his colleague’s scheme. His tacit agreement, though, in his colleague’s lamentations about the lack of “good girls” - ie. submissive, obedient, quiet - is unflattering, and his treatment of his doe-eyed female secretary is rather callous.

Asami is a fascinating character, mainly because Miike drops in huge sections of her backstory but refuses to connect them up - and actually revels in making them contradictory. The same scenarios from her tortured childhood and adolescence are replayed in flashback several times but altered each time; sometimes she appears as the victim, a graceful child ballerina, and sometimes she is the aggressor. Similarly, her motives for picking on Aoyama are unclear; she berates him - with some justification - about the audition scheme, saying its a sleazy way for men to pick up girls for sex, but it’s apparent that although his methods are dubious, Aoyama is genuinely, desperately in love - a situation she has manipulated and brought about herself (witness her slow smile when he finally caves in and phones her). Neither does she have a campaign against men, as her murder of the female bar owner proves. Miike ducks out of giving us the easy answers; if we could simply label her “abused child turns killer” we’d have some sort of psychological handle on her, but as it is, we don’t know what her game is.

As with much modern Japanese horror, there’s a fidgety stillness to the film that lends it an air of dread. For the final third, Miike throws all sense of chronology out of the window, returning to earlier scenes, relocating dialogue from scene to scene, bringing back dead characters - making it unclear what is a dream and what is real. Far from lessening the impact of the violence, it increases it, cutting the horrendous mess on Aoyama’s living room floor with an earlier scene of Aoyama and Asami lying in bed together on crisp white sheets. Overall, Audition is a testing but fascinating film; the first part almost challenges you to find the patience to sit through it, whereas the last part will leave you wondering what the hell you’ve just watched. It sort of makes sense, but deliberately doesn’t quite fit together. But if you have patience, a love of atmosphere and a strong stomach then Audition is definitely worth a look.

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