Audition is an interesting and unsettlingly realistic horror story based around deconstructing the Japanese concept of a Yamato Nadeshiko, a perfect wife as seen through traditional Japanese values. A widower named Shigeharu decides he's finally ready to date again, and decides to set up a fake film audition in order to find a woman he finds suitable. He narrows it down to an attractive young woman named Asami, and discovers that she is herself enamored with him. As he examines his relationship further, however, he begins to note a horrifying atmosphere surrounding Asami's past, and he realizes just how far she's willing to go to ensure that he remain hers, and hers alone.
The film takes some time to get the ball rolling, but the pace starts to accelerate around the time the audience begins to wonder about Asami's mental stability, as she sits in her completely unfurnished apartment seemingly alone, simply waiting for Shigeharu to call after her audition. Once Shigeharu starts suspecting things the movie quickly ramps up, jumping around the timeline a bit to establish the circumstances under which Asami's insecurities and violent clinginess developed. By the climax of the film, it starts unraveling, becoming unclear what is real and what is being imagined, including a horrifying trip to Asami's apartment and the fate of her ex-lover (featuring a stomach-churning vomit sequence involving few fewer “special effects” than one initially hopes) and a disturbingly well-done torture scene in Shigeharu's home after Asami discovers that he has a family and she's “not the only one he loves.” The story has very few morally sound characters and it's resolution is ambiguous, but it's plausibility as a worst case scenario in dating makes it one of the most unsettling films I've ever seen.
No comments:
Post a Comment