Audition (1999 film)

Shigeharu Aoyama is a widower whose son Shigehiko says that he should find a new wife. Shigeharu's friend Yasuhisa Yoshikawa, a film producer, devises a mock casting audition at which young women audition for the "part" of Shigeharu's new wife. Shigeharu agrees to the plan and is immediately enchanted by Asami Yamazaki, attracted to her apparent emotional depth.

Yasuhisa cannot reach any of the references in Asami's résumé, such as a music producer she said she worked for, who is missing. However, Shigeharu is so enthralled by her that he pursues her anyway. She lives in an empty apartment, containing a sack and a phone. For four days after the audition, she sits perfectly still next to the phone waiting for it to ring. When it finally does, she answers, pretending that she never expected Shigeharu to call. After several dates, she agrees to accompany him to a seaside hotel, where Shigeharu intends to propose marriage. At the hotel, Asami reveals burn scars on her body. Before having sex, Asami demands that Shigeharu pledge his love to her and no one else. Deeply moved, Shigeharu agrees. In the morning, Asami is nowhere to be found.

Shigeharu tries to track her down using her résumé, but as Yasuhisa warned, all of the contacts are dead ends. At the dance studio where she said she was trained, he finds a man with prosthetic feet who is shown to be torturous to Asami in her childhood. The bar where she said she worked has been abandoned for a year following the murder and dismemberment of the owner. A passerby tells Shigeharu that the police found three extra fingers, an extra ear, and an extra tongue when they recovered the body; Shigeharu has hallucinations of the body pieces. Meanwhile, Asami goes to Shigeharu's house and finds a photo of his late wife. Enraged, she drugs his liquor. Shigeharu comes home, pours a drink, and after a short while feels the effects of the drug. A flashback shows that the sack in Asami's apartment contains a man missing both feet, his tongue, one ear and three fingers on one hand. He crawls out and begs for food. Asami vomits into a dog dish and places it on the floor for the man. The man sticks his face into the vomit and hungrily consumes it.

Shigeharu collapses from the drug. Asami injects him with a paralytic agent that leaves his nerves alert, and tortures him with needles. She tells him that, just like everyone else in her life, he has failed to love only her. She cannot tolerate his feelings for anyone else, even his own son. She inserts needles into the skin below his eyes, saying "deeper" continuously as she does so. She then cuts off his left foot with a wire saw. Shigehiko returns home as Asami begins to cut off Shigeharu's other foot, and she sneaks up on him with a can of mace. As she attacks the boy, Shigeharu appears to suddenly wake up back in the hotel after he and Asami had sex, and his current ordeal seems to be only a nightmare; Shigeharu proposes marriage and Asami accepts. As he falls back asleep in the hotel, he returns to reality - his previous awakening having been false - to find his son fighting Asami. Shigehiko kicks her downstairs, breaking her neck. Shigeharu tells his son to call the police and stares at the dying Asami, who repeats what she said on one of their dates about her excitement on seeing him again.

• Eihi Shiina as Asami Yamazaki (山崎 麻美, Yamazaki Asami)
• Ryo Ishibashi as Shigeharu Aoyama (青山 重治, Aoyama Shigeharu)
• Jun Kunimura as Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (吉川泰久, Yoshikawa Yasuhisa)
• Tetsu Sawaki as Shigehiko Aoyama (青山 重彦, Aoyama Shigehiko)
• Miyuki Matsuda as Ryoko Aoyama (青山良子, Aoyama Ryoko)
• Toshie Negishi as Rie (リエ)
• Shigeru Saiki as Toastmaster (酒場のマスター, Sakaba no masutā)
• Ken Mitsuishi as Director (ディレクター, Direkutā)
• Ren Ohsugi as Shimada (芝田)
• Renji Ishibashi as Old man in wheelchair (車椅子の老人, Kurumaisu no rōjin)

Critics have considered Audition as both feminist and misogynistic.[6] Miike has stated that when he met journalists in the United Kingdom and France, he found they commented on the film's feminist themes when Asami gets revenge on the men in her life.[7] The film sets up Aoyama with traits and behaviors which could be considered sexist: a list of criteria for his bride to meet, and the phoney audition format he uses to search for future wife.[8] Tom Mes, author of Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike, stated that the torture sequence, with the mutilation of Aoyama, can be seen as revenge from Asami.[8] Dennis Lim of the Los Angeles Times examined similar themes, noting that the film is "ultimately about the male fear of women and female sexuality" and that women are blatantly objectified in the first half of the film, only to have Asami "redress this imbalance" in the second half when she becomes an "avenging angel".[9] Chris Pizzello, writing in the American Cinematographer, stated that one plausible approach to interpreting the film is to see the final act as a representation of Aoyama's guilt at his mistreatment of women and his desire to dominate them. Aoyama develops a paranoid fantasy of an attacking object: because he harbours sadistic thoughts towards women, he develops a fear that the object will retaliate.[10] Contrary to this, Miike has stated that the final torture scenes in the film are not a paranoid nightmare dreamed up by Aoyama.[11] Tom Mes has argued against the feminist portrayal of the film, noting that Asami is not motivated by an ideological agenda, and that acknowledging that she takes revenge on a man who has lied to her would be ignoring that she has also lied to Aoyama.[8] Asami states "I want to tell you everything" during the torture scene, implying she had not been truthful before.[8] Mes also notes that the avenging angel theme contradicts a feminist-themed revenge interpretation, given that one of Asami's victims is female.[8][12]

In Audition, the character of Asami is a victim of child abuse. Colette Balmain, in her book Introduction to Japanese Horror Film, described Asami as "just one more face of the wronged women in Japanese culture... They are victims of repression and oppression, and only death and loneliness remain for them".[13] The film critic Robin Wood wrote that through her child abuse, Asami is taught that love and pain must be inseparable.[14] The audience is led to identify with Asami through this victimization and also what Stephen LeDrew described as a "patriarchal Japanese society".[10] Elvis Mitchell (The New York Times) stated that the theme of the film was: "the objectification of women in Japanese society and the mirror-image horror of retribution it could create".[15] Tom Mes suggested that these themes can be witnessed in the scene where Asami feeds her mutilated prisoner and then turns into the childhood version of herself and pets him like a dog.[16] Mes concludes that this is done to suggest that what had happened in Asami's life had made her the violent adult seen in the film.[16]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 81% based on 74 reviews, with an average rating of 7.34/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "An audacious, unsettling Japanese horror film from director Takashi Miike, Audition entertains as both a grisly shocker and a psychological drama".[59] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 69 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[60]

Ken Eisner (Variety) gave the film a positive review.[1] The reviewer referred to the film as a "truly shocking horror film" that was "made even more disturbing by its haunting beauty".[1] Geoffrey Macnab, writing in Sight and Sound, referred to the film as a "slow-burning but ultimately devastating horror pic" and wrote that "it's a virtuoso piece of film-making with much more subtlety and depth than Miike's other films".[61] The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck described the film as "one of the most audacious, iconoclastic horror films in recent years".[62] Mark Schilling (The Japan Times) praised Shiina and Ishibashi's acting, but noted that "among the film's few irritants is a smarmy, snarly bad guy turn by Renji Ishibashi as Asami's wheelchair-using ballet instructor. He is a reminder of where too many other Miike films have headed – straight for the video racks".[63] Schilling concluded that "Miike is ready for a bigger role – as one of the leading Japanese directors of his generation".[63] In the early 2010s, Time Out conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films.[64] Audition placed at number 18 on their top 100 list.[65]

After the release of Audition, Miike was going to adapt Murakami's novel Coin Locker Babies, but the project failed to find enough financing.[70]

Audition has been described as an influence on "torture porn".[71][72][73] The term was invented by David Edelstein to describe films such as Saw, The Devil's Rejects and Wolf Creek that offer "titillating and shocking" scenes that push the audience to the margins of depravity in order for them to "feel something".[74] Audition influenced American directors such as Eli Roth.[75] Roth stated that Audition influenced him to make his film Hostel, with Miike even making a cameo as a satisfied customer of the kidnappers who let customers torture their victims.[71][75] Richard Corliss, writing in Time, opined that Audition was different from torture porn films as: "unlike Saw and its imitators in the genre of torture porn, Audition doesn't go for gore-ific money shots. Miike's films live inside their characters, taking the temperature of their longings, the ridiculous ambitions they chase so obsessively and their need to experience the extreme to prove they're alive".[76]

Audition has been referenced in western popular culture such as comics, music videos, and other media.[77][78] It was listed by twin directors Jen and Sylvia Soska as one of their favourite horror films, and with the sisters saying that it was an influence on their film American Mary.[79][80] The directors noted the character of Asami, stating that an audience generally sees: "female characters in a horror film as the helpless victim. This film leads you in one direction, skillfully hinting at a darker storyline for the otherwise meek and slight Asami until the final 15 minutes where we are introduced to a merciless monster. A perfect personification of the irrational rage of a woman scorned".[79][80] Director Quentin Tarantino included Audition in his list of top 20 films released since 1992 (the year he became a director), referring to it as a "true masterpiece if there ever was one".[81] Audition was among the films included in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.[82]

Deadline reported that executive producer Mario Kassar had begun work on an English language adaptation of Audition in 2014.[83] Richard Gray was brought on to serve as the remake's director and screenwriter.[84] The film's storyline would be taken from Ryu Murakami's novel as opposed to an adaptation of Miike's film, and the film would take place in North America.[83][85] The new film would include scenes and locations in the novel that were not in Miike's film.[85]

• List of horror films of 1999
• List of Japanese films of 1999

• Audition at IMDb
• オーディション at the Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese)