Audition

Dir: Takashi Miike

2000

*****

Japanese horror became incredibly popular in the late 90s following the success of Hideo Nakata's adaption of Ring the the genre has grown ever since. While Ring’s impact will probably never be matched, I’m not sure it was the greatest of the new wave of Japanese horror. I think Audition just beats it, for sheer creepiness and heart-pounding terror. While Ring was about ghosts and mystery, Audition tackles very different themes and is somewhat open to interpretation. The story involves Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a middle-aged widower, who is urged by his 17-year-old son, Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki), to begin dating again. Aoyama's friend Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura), a film producer, devises a mock casting audition at which young women audition for the "part" of Aoyama's new wife. Aoyama agrees to the plan and is immediately enchanted by Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina), attracted to her apparent emotional depth. Yoshikawa develops misgivings about Asami after he is unable to reach any of the references on her résumé, such as a music producer she claimed to work for, who is missing. However, Aoyama is so enthralled by her that he pursues her anyway. She lives in an empty apartment, containing only 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 Aoyama to call. After several dates, she agrees to accompany him to a seaside hotel, where a smitten Aoyama intends to propose marriage. At the hotel, Asami reveals burn scars on her body. Before making love, Asami demands that Aoyama pledge his love to her and no one else. A deeply moved Aoyama agrees. In the morning, Asami is nowhere to be found. Aoyama tries to track her down using her résumé, but as Yoshikawa warned, all of the contacts are dead ends. At the dance studio where she claimed to have trained, he finds a man with prosthetic feet. The bar where she claimed to work has been abandoned for a year following the murder and dismemberment of the owner. A passerby tells Aoyama that the police found three extra fingers, an extra ear, and an extra tongue when they recovered the body; Aoyama has hallucinations of the body pieces. Meanwhile, Asami goes to Aoyama's house and finds a photo of his late wife. Enraged, she drugs his liquor. Aoyama comes home, pours a drink, and begins feeling 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. Aoyama 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 his eyes, giggling as she does so. She then cuts off his left foot with a wire saw. Shigehiko returns home as Asami begins to cut off Aoyama's other foot, and she chases him upstairs. As she attacks the boy, Aoyama 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; Aoyama proposes marriage and Asami accepts. As he falls back asleep in the hotel, he returns to find his son fighting Asami, who is brandishing mace. Shigehiko kicks her downstairs, breaking her neck. Aoyama 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. The film is about as suspenseful as a film can be and the horror scenes are all as bad as you may fear. The film promises and delivers. If you watch it as a simple horror then you will no doubt be satisfied but I think there is far more to the story then meets the eye. The themes are both feminist and misogynist. Villains exist for a reason and some of the best bad guys turn bad because they themselves have been wronged in some way. The idea of auditioning women is attractive to men and even though Shigeharu seems to be an innocent and kindly man, the idea of tricking women into the auditions is actually horrific and the height of misogyny. When Asami reveals herself to be a murderer the story suddenly becomes about the male fear of women and female sexuality. Women are blatantly objectified in the first half of the film and in the second half Asami addresses the imbalance. An interpretation of the final scene could be Shigeharu's guilt at his mistreatment of women and his desire to dominate them. Shigeharu develops a paranoid fantasy of an attack because he harbours sadistic thoughts towards women, he develops a fear that ‘she’ will retaliate. In the book An Introduction to Japanese Horror Film, Asami is described 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. It is also suggested that she is a victim of child abuse. Miike has said in interviews that Asami is simply taking extreme revenge on Shigeharu for lying to him but I think that oversimplifies things and indeed, there is far more to it in the original novel. Omega Project were originally behind the production of Ring which was a great success in Japan and, subsequently, the rest of the world. Wanting to keep up momentum, they decided to make an adaptation of Ryū Murakami's 1997 novel Audition, feeling it would match the mood but would be different enough so as not to repeat themselves. They wanted to create a horror film different than the supernatural-themes of Ring, and chose to adapt Murakami's novel, which focused more on real world terror. To attempt something different, they hired a screenwriter (Daisuke Tengan) and a director (Takashi Miike) who were not known for working on horror films. To create Audition, Miike worked with many of his previous collaborators, such as cinematographer Hideo Yamamoto. Miike spoke of his cinematographer by saying that Yamamoto was: "very sensitive towards death. Both of his parents died very young, and it's not something he talks about much". Miike also noted that he felt that Yamamoto was: "living in fear, and that sensibility comes through in his work. It's something I want to make the most of". The film's score was composed by Kōji Endō. Endō had previously composed work for Miike on films such as The Bird People in China. Yasushi Shimamura was the film's editor, he had worked with Miike as early as Lady Hunter: Prelude To Murder in 1991. Takashi Miike is now regarded as one of the kings of alternative horror. Actor Ryo Ishibashi wanted to work with Miike and agreed to the role. He commented that despite not being a great fan of horror films, he enjoyed scripts, such as that of Audition, that showcased human nature. Model Eihi Shiina was cast in the film as Asami. Shiina's career was primarily as a model and she only began acting after being offered a film role while she was on holidays. Shiina first learned about Miike through his film Blues Harp, which made her interested in meeting the director. When Shiina first met Miike, they began talking about her opinions on love and relationships. On their second meeting, Miike asked Shiina to play the part of Asami. Shiina thought that the opinions and feelings she expressed to Miike were the reason she was cast in the role, and she tried to play the role as naturally as she could without going over the top, she did just that and I think that is why her character works so well and is as terrifying as she is. Audition was shot in approximately three weeks, which was about one more week than usual for Miike's films which shows just how fast a filmmaker he is. Audition was one of seven films Miike released in 1999. Anyone familiar with Miike’s work will guess why he really got involved with the project and while he had never done classical horror before, his films could be horrific in their own way. He is a master of suspense and intrigue but he certainly delivers when it comes to graphic horror. The torture scene at the end of the film did not initially contain Asami's lines "Kiri-kiri-kiri".Shiina was initially whispering her lines while filming this scene, but after discussion with Miike, the two decided that having her say these lines would make the scene scarier. Ishibashi found that Miike was "having so much fun with that scene", and that Miike was especially excited when Ishibashi's character's feet are cut off. For the special effects where Shiina's character places acupuncture needles into Ishibashi, special effects make-up was used to create a mask layer which was laid upon Ishibashi's eyes, which is then pierced by the needles. These are the moments people remember about the film and what has made it so notorious – this is the Takashi Miike we know and the one Omega hired. It is the ultimate modern horror film and an utter masterpiece.