4 out of 5

Director: Takashi Miike

As with many, Audition was my introduction to director Takashi Miike. While the film is quite shocking, it ends up being a good starting point for Miike as, oddly, it is much more patient and refined than a lot of his entries. It is not, however, his best film, nor a good showing of his themes and best attributes. Anyhow: Audition is a somewhat predictable tale of man falls in love with mysterious woman… who turns out to be not what he expected. The particulars here flesh it out a bit though: Ryo Ishibashi brings tons of humanity to Aoyama, making him almost an ideal single father who struggles to find a connection after losing his wife to cancer. Aoyamas downfall is in the way he searches for his mate – by using the ruse of a movie casting. From here the film plays on male and female stereotypes to lead to the expected but notably gruesome and creepy conclusion. What made this more than Fatal Attraction rip-off or cheap torture porn, though, was in Miikes construction of the tale. This is where his style does seep in – the odd edits, the blending of dreams and reality. It is a slow film, purposefully, and I still wonder how involved I would have been had the ending not been hyped before hand. But on subsequent viewings the meat comes out – everything is so suspiciously ideal that you are left waiting for it to crumble. So yes, start here with Miike, with the gorgeously grainy cinematography and misleadingly unflinching camera. Audition is not perfect, but it is an artistic and twisted take on a typical tale.