Audition (1999)
Directed by Takashi Miike
Starring: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Jun Kunimura
Genre: Drama/Horror
Running Time: 115mins

Rating:

Seven years on from the death of his wife, Shigeharu Aoyama, is urged by his now teenage son to seek out a new partner as a future wife. Reluctant at first, he is eventually convinced by his movie producer friend to partake in a fake casting audition as a means of selecting his ideal bride. With their resumes, and their personal statements as a basis for choosing his ideal woman, Aoyama waits anxiously for the entrance of Asami Yamazaki into the audition room. Taking advantage of her seemingly reserved, subservient nature he becomes intoxicated, but the deeper his involvement with her goes the more he learns that the woman he chose will become his worst nightmare.

This film is not for the faint hearted" has never been more appropriate than for Miike's wild, savage, beast of a film. Audition is a remarkable film which mixes an intense finale of exploitation horror with the prevalent sociological ideologies of loneliness, yearning and sexual inequality.

Miike's film has been seen as an attack on Japanese men and the docile, sub-servient position imposed upon their females. The final torture sequence certainly adds fuel to the fire with Asami carrying out what can only be perceived as a systematic vengeance/destruction of the male race. But for all the feminist symbolism musings, the real ace up Miike's sleeve for this film is not the graphically brutal imagery of the films climax, but the sheer genius and mastery of his build up.

If you have chosen to read either this review, or anyone else's for that matter prior to watching Audition, then you have already missed out on a significant proportion of what makes the film so amazingly powerful. Miike's film has become much like Hitchcock's (with whom he shares similar characteristics) Psycho. As a modern audience, viewing Psycho - we all wait for that shower scene. It's now become the trademark of the film. But before all the talk and all the hysteria the first audience to go into Psycho went in unaware. They were treated to the greatest trick a director ever pulled - the diversion sub-plot. Hitchcock's subverting of genres halfway through Psycho was a masterstroke of genius, but would he have been able to push the boundaries as much as Miike's film?

Applying this technique for Audition, an unexpected audience would be forgiven for thinking that Miike's film was nothing more than a harmless melodrama. Another quirky romance, with another quirky concept. Even though Miike hints at an element of eventual doom with his brief insights into Asami's obsessive, lonely lifestyle, it is all played off against moments reminiscent of daytime television soap operas. The exchanges between father and son are rooted in a pseudo-realist paternal landscape, whilst the moments spent with Aoyama's movie producer friend echo the buddy movie sentiments of bawdy humour and a sense of men who are still boys.

The "audition" sequence is heavily influenced by the opening to Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave, with quick flashes of entrances, quotes, and reactions. The scene is played out with a strong injection of humour filled with cinematic references (Ren Osugi falls victim as his acting abilities are affectionately mocked) but looked at with colder eyes, you see the contempt and disinterested nature in which the unsuccessful candidates are rolled in, and out of the auditorium which is a subtly misogynistic technique that could easily find a place in Neil LaBute's In The Company of Men.

The purpose of these scenes is to allow us the audience to get comfortable and relaxed. To make us believe that what we are about to see is the relationship between Asami and Aoyama tested by his under-hand means of seduction. But as with all predictable melodrama, we expect everything to be alright in the end. Love conquers all once more. And it is evident that Miike is all too happy with the knowledge that we will predict the path of his film flippantly discarding the unexpected. The sight of the audience waiting to see Aoyama find Asami and explain the situation, waiting for the expectable. Sure, Miike is all too happy with this. It's a sign that he has done his job in the best way possible. After all, he knows what comes next. All it will take is a sip of whiskey for our perception of reality to come crashing down in a hail of visceral, extreme imagery. We are the prey, and Miike is the predator, slowly stalking us the entire time, Miike has us trapped, with the protagonist, and he sure as hell is gonna make us suffer.

It is the power of this film combined with the delicacy of Miike's structuring that has kept me from even commenting on the bravura performances and the oppressive camerawork so far. A perfect compliment to Daisuke Tengan's taut, intense script is the cinematography of Hideo Yamamoto who observes with a cold distinctly Kubrickian stance throughout the scenes - there is little difference between the homes of Aoyama and Asami. The warmth that exists in the Aoyama household is not from framing, or from lighting but from interaction with characters. The cold blue of the hotel room at night pierces with a hidden menace - it is the juxtaposition of images conflicting with the seemingly romantic events that hints to us that all is not as it should be. From wide shots that express both Asami and Aoyama's loneliness and inner yearning, to the unbearable unflinching capturing of the torture in close up, some of the most intense cinematography is seen here. As a complete anti-thesis to Michael Haneke's infer all show nothing technique, this may be miss-conceived as exploitation, but this misconception couldn't be further from the truth.

The performances from the two leads (Ryo Ishibashi and Shiina Eihi) are perfectly low key. Ishibashi portrays Aoyama with the perfect amount of likeability, not straining for sympathy, but connecting with us through his natural desire to prevent being alone. Meanwhile, Eihi stands out for her perfectly submissive, charming personality luring us into her web in the same way as she does for Aoyama. Asami's own tortured life gives weight to her performance, providing a sympathetic overtone which makes the torture scene all the more difficult to watch. Had her character been evil through and through, had she harboured these violent thoughts unprovoked - then the film would ultimately fail. But the inclusion of her chequered past (to say the least) presents an adequate reason for her frailties. By no means justifying her actions, we can at least understand her mental instability. This conflict of hope and the horrific realism will stay with you long after the film has finished.

Takashi Miike has created a film of immense importance in Japanese cinema. While it is, by his own admission, an exaggeration of the consequences of japan's female inequalities - it is a continuation of a strong theme which runs through the horror genre. This world is a place where the woman is in control, a place where the men think they have it all, a place where they soon realise that what they have - is absolutely nothing. More often than not, they learn it in the hardest way possible.