Seven years after his wife passed away, film producer Shigeharu Aoyama (Ishibashi) begins to think it is time he embarked on a new relationship. Spurred on by his teenage son who is himself making his first attempts at dating, he puts the idea to his close friend Yoshikawa who agrees that he needs to find himself a new girlfriend. His idea is for Aoyama to meet his ideal woman by setting up an audition for a film (which may or may not actually get made), as the applicants for the role will be young, talented and attractive, just the qualities he is looking for.
The opening of the film is more like a comedy than the outright horror you might expect, as Aoyama trawls through endless resumes while his son tries to woo a classmate. Then the audition takes place, a classic sequence of a succession of weird and wonderful women being vetted by the two producers, with various applicants making fools of themselves and none of them catching Aoyama's eye. However all along he has been anticipating the arrival of one young lady, Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina) whose application appealed to him when she explained how her dream of being a ballet dancer ended when she damaged her hips and how that loss made her feel like she had died.
He eventually persuades her to begin dating him and they tentatively embark on a relationship, culminating in him planning to propose to her during a weekend holiday. However after their first night together, she disappears and the film turns into a hellish search to discover her whereabouts and the truth about her mysterious past.
The sequences from here on in really do mess with your head, blurring reality and dreamscapes with flashbacks and narrative twists as Asami is reinvented from her meek, submissive role into a vengeful, dominant alter-ego. There are some really gruesome sequences, in fact people with needle phobias (or an irrational fear of cheesewire) will find it really hard going as Asami sets to work on rectifying Aoyama's view of the fairer sex. It makes the whole thing so much more effective after such a subdued, light hearted opening and when things take a turn for the worse (think Jacob's Ladder or Konami's Silent Hill games; only far more unsettling) it is wickedly disorientating
For all it's graphic body-horror, Audition is not a shock tactic gorefest but the kind of uncomfortable watch that, while taking you to the extremes of emotion like all the best horror, is simultaneously thought provoking and compelling. Furthermore, it is brave enough to have no conclusive ending but instead leaves you to draw your own conclusions. I won't go into anymore detail to avoid spoiling this gem of a picture but if you've seen it and want to compare your interpretation with mine, click here. |
