Review of Audition (2000) by Andrew H — 14 Jan 2012

Okay, so, I, like most people (I'm assuming), really only started watching this for the infamous foot amputation scene, and it is worth it for that. That scene is horrifying in many different ways, and it might not even be the most fucked up thing in the movie.

I wasn't actively keeping track of the time, but I think maybe the last 20-30 minutes of the movie, when all the crazy shit happens, that's the best part. It was extremely effective, terrifying, fucked up, mesmerizing, and there are dream sequences that are as good as a Lynch movie.

If the rest of the movie was done as well as those last 20-30 minutes, it would've been a goddamn classic. But the rest of the movie is kind of a piece of shit. A lot could've been cut. The first hour or so is meh character development which, to be fair, does its job, but it was just bad.

Also, I'm kind of a sucker for style and dope-ass cinematography, but it was a bunch of tripod shots, the camera rarely moved, and there's this scene in a room where two guys are talking about how fucking crazy this goddamn girl is and there's like a mirror or something and it switches from handheld and it's really jarring and unpleasant to look at and it doesn't flow and I was all "I can't believe this shit" while I rolled my eyes.

There was also a lot of confusion I had as to whether weird shit that happens it's just part of Japanese culture that I'm not familiar with, or terrible writing. The premise of the movie is a guy who's wife dies and he has to take care of his son and 8 years later he thinks it's time to get remarried, but instead of socializing with people, he gets his movie industry friend to set up an audition where girls have to write essays about themselves.

The guy who wants to get remarried has very specific requirements that his perfect woman has to meet. Miraculously, a girl shows up and she's perfect. The audience knows right away that she is fucking insane and is going to fuck him up.

You can just tell from the poster that she's up to no good. Now, I don't know how things work in Japan, but this guy's agenda is pretty much just "you're the perfect woman and we're getting married now" "okay whatever" "don't saw off my foot with a sharp wire" "i'm not making any promises".

Maybe women don't have a say in these supposedly consensual matters over there? I don't fucking know. But it's weird. There's also this montage of weird auditions they do with numerous girls with them asking weirdly personal questions and the girls just doing random shit and it's all set to circus music as I recall.

But much of the montage gets lost in translation (lol sofia coppola reference 'cause it's a japanese movie) because it cuts off girls mid sentence and snaps to another girl. This may have worked if Japanese was a language I spoke, but I had to read subtitles, and it was pretty much just "One time for breakfast I had a---" and then it cut to the next one.

And they used the "---" symbol too. It's just fucking odd. It's a really odd movie. But, still, those last 30 minutes or so are incredible, as good as a Lynch dream, and are very much worth watching.

But the rest of it is a goddamn TV movie.