Ôdishon (1999)

Director:

Takashi Miike

Writers:

Ryû Murakami (novel)
Daisuke Tengan (screenplay)

Release Date:

3 March 2000 (Japan)

Genre:

Drama | Horror | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

Tagline:

She always gets a part

Plot:

Widower takes an offer to screen girls at a special audition, arranged for him by a friend to find him a new wife. The one he fancies is not who she appears to be after all...

Plot Keywords:

Audition | Widower | Friend | Dinner | Sack

Awards:

3 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Ryo Ishibashi	...	Shigeharu Aoyama
Eihi Shiina	...	Asami Yamazaki
Tetsu Sawaki	...	Shigehiko Aoyama
Jun Kunimura	...	Yasuhisa Yoshikawa
Renji Ishibashi	...	Old man in wheelchair
Miyuki Matsuda	...	Ryoko Aoyama
Toshie Negishi	...	Rie
Ren Ôsugi	...	Shimada
Shigeru Saiki	...	Toastmaster
Ken Mitsuishi	...	Director
Yuriko Hiro'oka	...	Michiyo Yanagida
Fumiyo Kohinata	...	TV station presenter
Misato Nakamura	...	Misuzu Takagi
Yuuto Arima	...	Shigehiko as a child
Ayaka Izumi	...	Asami as a child

Also Known As:

Audition (International: English title) (UK) (USA)
Oodishon (Japan) (alternative transliteration)
Audition (Argentina) (Spain) [es]
Audition (Canada: French title) (France) [fr]
Ölüm provasi (Turkey: Turkish title) [tr]
Akroasi (Greece) (festival title) [el]
Anjo ou Demónio (Portugal) [pt]
Audition (Germany) [de]
Audition (Finland) [fi]
Audition (Audición) (Spain) [es]
O Teste Decisivo (Brazil) (festival title) [pt]

MPAA:

Rated R for violence/torture and sexuality.

Runtime:

115 min | USA:113 min (R-rated version)

Country:

South Korea | Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS-Stereo | Dolby SR

Certification:

Sweden:15 | Chile:14 | Canada:18+ (Quebec) | Singapore:R21 (cut) | Portugal:M/16 (orginal rating) | Portugal:M/18 (DVD rating) | Belgium:KNT | Argentina:18 | Australia:MA (cable rating) | Australia:R (original rating) | Canada:R | Denmark:15 | Finland:K-18 | France:-16 | Germany:18 | Hong Kong:III | Ireland:18 | Italy:VM14 | Japan:R-18 | Netherlands:16 | New Zealand:R18 | Norway:18 | Spain:18 | Switzerland:16 (canton of Zurich) | Switzerland:18 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:18 (canton of Vaud) | UK:18 | USA:R (cut) | USA:Unrated

Company:

AFDF

Trivia:

When the film was screened at the Rotterdam Film Festival 2000 it had a record number of walkouts. At the Swiss premiere someone passed out and needed emergency room attention.

Goofs:

Continuity: During their weekend getaway, Asami clearly removes all of her clothing then lies in bed and covers with a sheet. She then raises the sheet to expose the wounds on her thigh. The white panties can clearly be seen despite the fact that she just removed them.

Quotes:

Asami Yamazaki: [while pushing needles into the space under Shigeharu's eyelids] Deeper. Deeper.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in One Minutes (2009)

The horror, the horror!

Art-house horror flicks are not a very common genre (few come to mind except 'Don't Look Now') but Takashi Miike's film 'Audition' is a welcome addition to the canon. Beautifully shot and orchestrated, it is both a subtle personal drama and one of the most genuinely horrifying things I have seen. The early stages of this film resemble a work by Claude Sautet, only seen through a Japanese sensibility, about the relationship between an older man and a beautiful young woman, but there's something slightly discomforting both in the man's definition of the perfect partner, and in the person he finds who fulfills it. The story slides into first a mystery, and then a full blown horror story, the power of which comes from following a very simple golden rule: namely, make the audience care about the characters first: one small needle can be very very scary if you think that it's for real. And by keeping the meaning ambiguous (unlike, say, 'The Shining', with its self-defeating collapse into hyperbolic mania), the film also retains its impact after the initial shock.

This sense of ambiguity is also crucial to the film's claims to be something more than simply an unorthodox gore-fest. 'Audition' constructs, and then deconstructs, a certain vision of the world and the "horror" scenes are only part of this. The result is utterly beguiling, and one can even see similarities with Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' in 'Audition's' portrayal of a man's complicit relationship with hell.

In some ways, this is not a universal film and I could not imagine it working in English: can you envisage any Western actress speaking the Eihi Shiina's lines with a straight face?. Whether that's because the film is saying something profound about Japanese culture, or whether the fact that it appears to do so can finesse the issue for foreign audiences, I'm not sure. Dramatically, 'Audition' is, despite its climax, not the best film ever made. But atmospherically speaking, it's a masterpiece.