Review of Audition (2000) by Jon J — 04 Mar 2012

Audition is a particularly hard film to grasp. On one hand, it's a romance. On the other (as can be seen from the cover), it's a horror film. Oddly enough, these two aspects of the film are so intimately intertwined that it's difficult to separate them at all. What we've got left is a very audacious, genuinely unsettling film that you won't be forgetting anytime soon.

Ryo Ishibashi portrays Shigeharu Aoyama, a widower who along with his son (Tetsu Sawaki) is trying to cope with the loss of his beloved wife. His son decides to one day encourage him to go back on the market, so to speak, and through some wily trickery orchestrated by his friend and film producer, Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura), a fake audition is held to find a prospective wife for Aoyama. He finds what is to him the perfect girl in Asami Yamazaki, a timid but beautiful young woman. However, there's something unmistakably awry with Yamazaki, accentuated by Yoshikawa's inability to find any information related to her personal life; but as the idiom says, love is blind, and Aoyama finds that not everything is as it seems.

Possibly the best aspect of Audition is how absolutely unpredictable it is. Despite what we already know from the get-go about Yamazaki's dubious nature, it's impossible to discern what comes next. A tremendous amount of effort has been put into making the characters believable and understandable. What Aoyama means to do with his audition isn't exactly morally sound, but you feel for him, for his sadness. He's had some difficult twists in his life and he shows kindness in his character rather than pure lust and desire. Meanwhile, although Yamazaki is irredeemably suspicious, her vulnerability makes her far harder to diagnose than at first glance.

When these two characters clash, a romance is born that feels natural. They feed off their hardships, relate and appreciate each other on a more profound level than with most other movie couples. It's rather tragic that the viewer is more aware of a figurative guillotine hanging over the serenity but Takashi Miike (the film's director) both maintains the illusion and the reality the characters choose to live in. This is made even more apparent later on when the lines are blurred between these two states of mind, culminating in some rather disquieting realizations. Much applaud should go to the writer of the original novel, Ryu Murakami, whose adeptness at writing shines through in the film. Likewise, the screenwriter Daisuke Tengan deserves props for translating the novel so fluently to the TV screen.

As mentioned earlier, this film is more an amalgam of two genres, and neither side suffers as a result. The movie starts off not much unlike any other romantic, happy-go-lucky tale. This is interspersed, however, with some truly challenging scenes, some of which are cringe-inducing. What's truly amazing about these difficult parts is that they neither feel forced or gratuitous. In fact, they feel more like a logical progression to what preceded it. Maybe that's where the true horror lies, in that we can both perceive such beauty and happiness while watching what lies bubbling underneath, and what eventually geysers up in one of the more surprising endings in film history.

Stylistically, Audition does really well. The traditional daily life of the characters is usually represented in a cold blue, with little in the way of diversity. In the more romantically driven scenes, however, things change. Orange and red become more prominent, almost like a sign-post pointing to more complex and subdued emotions. This wouldn't be worthy of mention if these colors weren't later used to completely throw you off kilter. What was once welcoming becomes almost unbearable, the warm becomes the sickly. It's always worthwhile to point out when a cinematographer knows how to utilize the settings to not only appease the eye but tell a more primitive and visual story, one that accompanies the narrative in a way that is not obtrusive.

The defining feature of Audition is its insistence on making you care. It may seem overemphasized but what many contemporary horror movies forget is that the characters have to be set up convincingly before we care about their fates. Miike's fantastic film spends most of its time doing just that, making us first and foremost want to see Aoyama succeed in his life and endeavors. Just that solidarity is a reason to check out Audition, but add to that the deft handling of two entirely conflicting genres so that you don't even notice the distinction makes it a must-see. Beware though that it's not for the weak of heart, but that should be common knowledge when looking at Mikee's track record.