J-Film Blog

First off, Takashi Miike is one sick and twisted individual.  Why I keep using those words in this blog I dunno, just a product of the stuff I’m seeing I guess.  But Miike especially seems to have a firm grasp on the stuff that makes you squirm.  In Audition, he manages to make even hardcore horror and war movie buffs like me squirm in my seat.  And another thing, if you’ve got a fear of needles… don’t even try to watch this!

Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) is a recent newcomer to the widower crowd, and his son Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki) tells him that he needs to get himself remarried.  He mentions this to his partner at work, Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura) and he comes up with a scheme to “audition” a bunch of women under the pretense of a new TV series.

While going through applications, he comes across Asami Yamazaki’s (Eihi Shiina) resume, and instantly takes a fancy to her.  After a grueling (and funny) day of auditions, he starts to pursue a relationship with her, and all seems to be going well.

Until some things about her background don’t pan out.  None of her information seems to be legitimate, and as Aoyama digs futher, and his relationship with Asami progresses, things definitely start to take a sinister turn.  Unfortunately for the film, this “lead up” to the truly sinister turn takes a long, long time.  Long enough that I was starting to wonder if I made a bad choice.

Then, out of the blue, the proverbial shit hits the fan.  And lets just say that its a particularly nasty turn.  Asami definitely has a dark side to her.

Under normal circumstances I’d file this under “formula ‘victim’ movies.”  You know, like Hollywood is so hell-bent on creating.  Nice guy/girl/family gets involved with seemingly nice 3rd party, and things start to get strange and violent, culminating in a conflict where the bad guy gets his in the end.  “Single White Female” type of material.

Under normal circumstances that is.  Takashi Miike manages to twist this into a cerebral mind-___ near the end. In his own particular, uh, idiom, he provides enough shock and “oh, gross” moments to set it apart.  I’ll spare you the gory details, so to speak, but I seriously don’t know how he comes up with these things.  Its somewhat unfortunate, though, that Miike seems to rely on the “gross” and gory to get the shocks across.  Its definitely a theme of his.

Bottom Line:  What starts out as a slowly paced drama turns into a real squirmer.  Fair warning for the squeamish.  And like I said above, if you don’t like needles, bring your blindfold.  If the first part of the movie didn’t drag on so long, I might have rated it higher, but overall just giving it a so-so rating.

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235198/
Amazon: Audition: Collector’s Edition