Reviewed by Elvis Mitchell
The Japanese psychological horror film Audition (1999) has been responsible for throngs of shaken filmgoers staggering out of theaters for the last year or so; it’s Fatal Attraction with a sense of morality instead of a need to pander — specifically, the movie’s theme is the objectification of women in Japanese society and the mirror-image horror of retribution it could create.
Patronizing audiences may be a sure way to make money, but the resulting pictures are like writing on sand; Audition, now at the Film Forum, has no such impermanence. With a quiet that’s meticulously transformed into moodiness and then fear-filled tension, the director Takashi Miike eases us in slowly; in the early part, the picture has the formal modesty of a work by Yasujiro Ozu, the Japanese director best known for his minimalist melodramas in which a vital element is missing from a family. In Audition, what’s missing is a wife. The face of Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) is slack with sadness. He’s a widower who has raised his son by himself. This solid middle-class citizen is finally persuaded to look for a new woman in his life by a friend who has a cold-blooded idea. Aoyoma is a television producer, and the friend has him try to find someone by auditioning women under the pretext of looking for an actress for his next project.
Asami (Eihi Shiina), who catches his eye, is a demure pastry in virginal white. After a few dates, she disappears and Aoyama, who has allowed himself to be vulnerable, is stricken. When we find what Asami has been doing when she isn’t seeing Aoyama — besides apparently sitting motionless by the phone — hearts skip a beat.
The picture is about victims — Asami has most definitely suffered more than Aoyama — but it’s also a great, sick rush with a kicker on the level of The Vanishing.
In Audition, though, the awful denouement is earned. Mr. Miike’s talents include patience. Nothing is rushed here, and he lets horror mount. (His most recent film, Dead or Alive, was a crime drama catalog of shock effects by a man capable of showy and empty gestures, all reflexes. This film is the polar opposite, where every note is thought through and worked out.)
Aoyama’s loneliness gives Audition density and shape. It’s a thoughtful element that provides the picture with a rooting interest, and he seems too decent a man to have gone along with the crass scheme of turning women into items in a display case — it’s as low as the stories of showbiz people who thumb through stacks of actresses’ photos looking for dates.
Mr. Miike’s skill comes in the accretion of emotional details and in his knack for dropping information in at just the right instant. Aoyama can’t help but evoke ambivalence; though we’re sympathetic to his plight, he has done the wrong thing. It would be easier if he were mean, or crazy. It’s worse — at heart, he’s a desperate romantic who has fallen for a mirage. When his vision clears and he sees what’s really there, it’s much too late.
Mr. Miike doesn’t hold everything in check: he simply keeps information from Aoyama, but not from the audience.
The most telling and unforgettable horror is performed with a straight face, no winks or smirks to let us off the hook. Audition could be an O. Henry story as directed by Douglas Sirk in full ”Written on the Wind” mode, and the climactic scenes in which the true heart of darkness is revealed are gruesome and nightmarish.
It’s beyond what Aoyama could ever have imagined, and you’ll probably flash back to that first image of Asami in her white wrapper; she was obviously auditioning Aoyama, too. Unfortunately for him, he failed the tryout. Audition doesn’t let you down, but bring a strong constitution — like any audition, it’s a test of nerve.
Review courtesy of The New York Times