Ōdishon (Audition). 1998. Japan. Directed by Takashi Miike. Screenplay by Daisuke Tengan, based on novel by Ryu Murakami. With Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina. In Japanese; English subtitles. 35mm print courtesy of American Genre Film Archive. 113 min.
Nearly a decade into his career as the hyper-prolific enfant terrible of ultraviolent Japanese crime films, Takashi Miike took one of his many hard left stylistic turns with Audition, a slow-burn horror film with lurking elements of 1970s rape-revenge and 1990s “torture porn,” but relatively few of those subgenres’ grindhouse excesses. Shigeharu, a lonely widower, settles upon a somewhat byzantine stratagem for finding a new wife: he enlists a film producer to hold a fake casting call so he can “audition” prospective partners. His reprehensible plan seemingly pays off when he meets Asami, an elusive, emotionally complex young woman whose references don’t quite check out. The smitten Shigeharu persists despite the warning signs, but will he learn too late that Asami isn’t exactly marriage material? Alternately read by critics as a darkly misogynistic fairy tale and a searing indictment of Japanese patriarchy, Audition makes one thing perfectly clear: relationships based on mutual deception always start off on the wrong foot.