Audition (”dishon) (1999)

Posted by Paige MacGregor (paige@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 1, 2007

She always gets a part.

Since its premier at the VC Film Festival in Canada in October of 1999, the art house cult horror film Audition (”dishon) has earned its creator, longtime Japanese film and television writer and director Takashi Miike, an ever-growing international fan following.

Although its scenes of horrific violence and twisted torture are more emotionally gripping and physically disturbing than those featured in some of the most ridiculously violent horror films to emerge over the past five years, including the French horror thriller Haute Tension (2003; released in the U.S. in 2005 as High Tension) and even Korean director Chan-wook Park’s 2003 torture-revenge masterpiece Oldboy, Audition’s shocking visuals (at the film’s Swiss premiere one audience member was so disturbed by Audition’s graphic violence that they passed out and had to be taken to the emergency room) ultimately fail to compensate fully for the film’s excruciatingly sluggish plot and character development. For viewers accustomed to the high-powered, high-speed, multi-sensory stimuli of video games—the same viewers who can follow every split-second motion of fight scenes in movies like Spider-Man 3 (2007) and Transformers (2007)—the slow, measured and deliberate speech and action of Japanese horror films like Audition will border on torture in its own right.

Miike’s cinematic adaptation of the Ry» Murakami novel, ”dishon, weaves together strains of romance, sexual obsession, physical abuse, psychological torture, familial dysfunction and a strong, lasting sense of isolation, deep affectation and pure shock into what may be the most harrowing 115-minutes a viewer will ever spend in a seated position.

With visual elements reminiscent of director Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-on (remade in 2004 for U.S. release as The Grudge), also released in 2003—apparently a benchmark year for the international horror film genre—Miike’s tenth major film release is a peculiar combination of suspense and stomach-twisting torture that also exploits the cinematic trope of the fatal, affected and usually physically and/or mentally tortured attractive young woman popular throughout film history. Some horror films to utilize this trope, which appears in various forms from genre to genre (such as the “femme fatale” figure that traditionally appears in films noirs of the 1940s-1950s and later noir revival films), include The Exorcist (1973), The Ring (2002), The Grudge, and Dark Water (2005), as well as the films on which the latter three were based, respectively Ringu (1998), Ju-on (2003), and Honogurai mizu no soko kara (2002).

Audition is most interesting in its blatant attempt to address the longstanding fear harbored by men of virtually every culture of the enigma presented by women, especially preadolescent girls. With human nature dictating that we fear what we do not understand, young girls serve as perhaps the most perplexing and therefore the most fear-inducing entities possible for men. The continued prevalence of specters, ghosts, and apparitions that take the form of little girls and seductive women in the horror/thriller genre, a type of film that arguably caters to a predominantly male audience (which is why torture porn like Hostel, 2005, and Captivity, 2007, hits the box office in increasing numbers, and with increasingly large budgets, each year), speaks to the deep-seated nature of this particular male terror.

While obsessed with and transfixed by the young girl/woman, in the case of Audition a mysterious and hauntingly beautiful 24-year-old girl named Asami Yamazaki (played by Eihi Shiina, Eureka, 2000; Harmful Insect, 2001) who attracts the attention of the film’s protagonist, Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) from among the numerous other attractive and talented female applicants (the movie’s plot revolves around the protagonist’s search for a new wife, which he conducts under the guise of auditioning women for a leading role in a new movie), the male mind simultaneously recognizes in this aesthetically pleasing vision of sexual fulfillment an element of fear, one expertly illustrated by Miike in Audition. Asami Yamazaki stands apart from the other female applicants not only visually—her plain clothing and unassuming, timid nature set her apart from many of the other brightly dressed, outgoing and eager-to-please applicants—but also cinematically. Prior to Asami’s audition, the waves of female applicants appear at an ever increasing rate, finally melding into a montage sequence that is abruptly cut short by Asami’s entrance into the interview room.

Such scenes clearly establish Asami as an object of beauty, reverence and eventually obsession for Aoyama, who spends a significant amount of time staring at her headshot while he sits alone in his home nights. But Miike soon begins to cross cut these scenes with others that quickly bring Asami’s past, intentions and mental state into question. One in particular, a sequence in which Aoyama dreams that Asami is a emotionally cold and mentally deranged murderer bent on torturing him, speaks to the association of women with the unknown, the dangerous and the fatal in the male subconscious, especially since Miike chose to include this sequence immediately following the first time Asami and Aoyama have sex.

Overall, Audition is a film best watched only by the most avid horror/thriller film fans; it is not for those with a weak stomach or those without a taste for gratuitous torture and violence. Audition stands as a testament to Takashi Miike’s skill as both a writer and director, and as a perfect explanation for his growing cult fan following.

Grade: B+

Read more articles by Paige MacGregor