David Cronenberg, meet Takashi Miike. Takashi, this is Dave. You guys need to get acquainted, because you are both seriously - and equally - messed in the head.
There are a lot of great films screening at Local Heroes this week, but Audition, playing tonight at the Garneau Theatre, could very well be the one that causes the most tongues to wag. Walking out after the credits roll is very much like waking up after a nightmare, when the cool smoothness of reality seems just a little bit off kilter.
Avant-garde Japanese director Miike had a hit at last year's Local Heroes with his sumptuous modern fairy tale The Bird People in China. This time around he appears to be offering up a well-drawn little romantic comedy-drama about a Tokyo widower looking for love. "Appears" being the operative word.
If you plan on seeing Audition, it would be best to stop reading right here. Go see the movie with no preconceptions and no shields already in place, and be prepared to be whacked upside the head with a sledgehammer. It is not for the faint of heart.
Middle-aged executive Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a good-hearted man who has raised his son alone since the death of his wife seven years earlier, has decided it's time to seek a new mate before his looks fade completely.
A film producer friend convinces him to participate in a fake audition, screening 30 young, beautiful women ostensibly for the role of the heroine in a new movie - but really choosing one for the role of Aoyama's new wife.
Aoyama is smitten with a willowy, child-like former ballerina named Asami (fashion model Eihi Shiina), and shyly tracks her down after the audition. They begin to date, and a tentative romance forms. All seems well, although Asami's references don't check out and people associated with her have mysteriously gone missing.
The scene that begins Audition's slow descent into hell is truly soul-chilling. Asami sits motionless and alone in a dimly lit room, her head hung, seemingly waiting for days for Aoyama's next call. When the phone finally rings, she simply smiles - and then a large sack that had been lying in the background jumps to life, the person (or thing) inside writhing in pain and torment.
More and more seeds of awfulness are sown and when this seemingly sensitive love story finally blossoms into pure physical and psychological horror, the effect is all the more intense because it's been simmering so long.
The final 20 minutes of the film are excruciatingly difficult to watch, not just for the visual grotesqueness (in which Miike outdoes Cronenberg himself) but for the psychological horror being inflicted on Aoyama. Miike toys with the structure of these scenes in such a way that the audience isn't sure what's real, what's a dream, what's memory and what's simply hallucination. And there is no boo-gotcha ending to relieve the unbearable tension.
After enduring several years of annoyingly self-aware teen slasher flicks, Audition is a strangely refreshing punch in the gut that puts the horror back in "horror movie."
Don't see it alone.
Or right after dinner.
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