Cheap Audition (DVD) (Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina) (Takashi Miike) Price

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Customer Reviews of Audition

I can't decide which director would enjoy watching this film best: Clive Barker, Dario Argento, or Alfred Hitchcock. All these directors I appreciate for their talents in darkness whether it is extreme or subtle. Takashi Miike has accomplished drawing the audience in slowly with subtle and well-made storytelling that turns into a roller coaster ride of white-knuckle extreme terror. At first it seems as though Miike is presenting at straightforward family drama. Husband/father Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) widowed seven years prior decides under the gentle and humorous direction of his son (Tetsu Sawaki) it is time to remarry. Simple? Well, no. Aoyama's drinking buddy Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura) decides to hold a fake audition for a film in search of the perfect woman. The editing during this sequence has a natural rhythm and humor that highlights the whole facade as the numbers of unusual women are asked a series of questions. Enter Asami (Eihi Shiina), a former ballet dancer, who seems to have suffered in her past. Aoyama falls in love quickly, and against the warnings of Yoshikawa moves forward in quest for the perfect mate," a compliant woman is best." Takashi quickly cuts to a still shot of Asami, sitting on the floor her head bent down, her hair falling over her head so we can't see her face, a telephone in the foreground, and a very large canvas bag. Throughout soundtrack is very well done and there are very different types of music to fit each scene. At this point, however, there is total silence. Long enough to create tremendous tension. Miike takes the audience with Aoyama as hints Asami's of psychotic disintegration almost subliminally sneak into the narrative. At the midway point we become just as disoriented as Aoyama. Is love blind and deaf? In a series of well-edited montage scenes we are shown previous shots of conversations with different dialog, or simply, more direct. Asami seems to be disclosing all of her painful and tragic past. Or is she? Do we really listen when we are in love, or do we simply hear what we want to hear? Asami's lifelong forced submission and compliance have been driven so deep they boomerang ..standing these traits on their heads. I enjoyed Takashi's sense of direction. The film flows, picking up pace towards the final scenes effectively employing the lost art of giving the audience the maximum amount of tension and fear while revealing little. By then it is too late. Throw in a couple of misplaced acupuncture needles, dismembered limbs, three fingers and a tongue. Well, you can imagine the scenarios. Or can you? This is a slow burn, with a great pace and it really pays off. Not for the squeamish, faint of heart or anyone who is afraid of needles. Deeper, deeper..deeper.

Why using women does not pay
At its very dark heart Audition is just another femme-fatal attraction movie. The bases for everything on display here is how women are used by men and the lengths that some will go to get revenge. The real strong point of this film is that the main male protagonist is just a really nice guy who messes it up with the wrong woman.

The premise is simple. Lonely father seeks out his film making buddy to hold a fake Audition for a movie so that he can find a woman that he wants. The woman he chooses turns out to be a bit of a mystery and so he tries to track her past down only to reveal a lot of murder and mayhem along the way. The film then sort of becomes dreamy and we learn through some very confusing sequences that the protagonist has done a lot of bad things off-screen that we did not know about. The ending is torture in every sense of the word and has become legendary in Asian horror cinema.

Many people will not like this movie because it is very slow moving and is often confusing even at the best of times. Towards the end of the film the director brings out a couple of flashback and dream sequences that actually show that our protagonist has been doing a lot of cheating and in many ways is getting what is coming to him, however at the same time what happens goes a way beyond justification and certainly shocks the viewer on all counts. Many viewers will have their eyes firmly shut until the screaming stops.

The imagery and editing in this film are striking. The story is non-linear and this will put many people off but it is done in a David Lynch sort of way. The film must be watched more than once in order to understand the story but this can be a hard task to be put through twice because of its sluggishness at the start and merciless display of horror at the end.

Although never one to tell the audience everything directly Takashi Miike's modern masterpiece still works as a structured film although crudely done but highly original all the same. This is an extremely graphic film that is not for the squeamish by any means but you will be hard pressed to find any femme fetal movie that can match it for horrors.

Men of the world, learn the message well. Keep your thing firmly in your pants with strangers of the opposite sex if you don't want to end up like him!

Audition
The other reviews will give you a description of what the film is about (though probably too much of one), so I won't dwell on the subject. It's a film that Should be seen and not described anyway. This Is one of my all time favorite films, so I am going to be incredibly biased. This film is excellent: Takashi Miike (the director) is perfectly in his element with this kind of film. The best way, I think, to describe this film is to say that Audition is to Japan, what Silence of the Lambs or Psycho is/was to America. The lead actress, Eihi Shiina, does a frighteningly great job in her film debut. Simply put, Audition is an awesome and exceptional film :).