Audition (1999 film)
Audition | |
---|---|
Ryu Murakami | |
Produced by | |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Hideo Yamamoto |
Edited by | Yasushi Shimamura |
Music by | Kōji Endō |
Production companies |
|
Release dates |
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Running time | 113 minutes[4] |
Country | Japan |
Language | Japanese[3] |
Box office | $131,296 (United States)[5] |
Audition (オーディション, Ōdishon) is a 1999
Audition was originally a project of the Japanese company Omega Project, who wanted to make a horror film after the massive financial success of their previous production
Audition premiered, with a few other Japanese horror films, at the Vancouver International Film Festival, but it received increased attention when screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2000, where it received the FIPRESCI Prize and the KNF Award. Following a theatrical release in Japan, the film continued to play at festivals and had theatrical releases in the United States and United Kingdom, followed by several home media releases.
Audition was received positively by Western film critics on its release, with many noting the final torture sequence and its contrast with the non-horrific scenes before. The film has appeared on several lists of the best horror films ever made, and has had an influence on other horror films and directors including
Plot
Shigeharu Aoyama is a widower whose son Shigehiko says that he should find a new wife. Shigeharu's friend Yasuhisa Yoshikawa, a film producer, devises a mock casting audition at which young women audition for the "part" of Shigeharu's new wife. Shigeharu is immediately enchanted by an applicant named Asami Yamazaki.
Yasuhisa cannot reach any of the references in Asami's résumé, such as a music producer she said she worked for, who is missing. However, Shigeharu is so enthralled that he pursues her anyway. She lives in a tiny apartment, containing little besides a large sack and a telephone. For four days after the audition, she sits perfectly still next to the phone waiting for it to ring. When it finally does, she answers, pretending that she never expected Shigeharu to call. After several dates, she accompanies him to a seaside hotel, where Shigeharu intends to propose marriage. She reveals burn scars on her body and before having sex, demands that Shigeharu pledge his love to her. Deeply moved, he agrees. In the morning, Asami is nowhere to be found.
Shigeharu tries to track her down but as Yasuhisa warned, all of the contacts on her résumé are dead ends. At the dance studio where she trained, he finds a man with prosthetic feet who tortured Asami when she was a child, causing her burn scars. The bar where she worked has been abandoned for a year following the murder and dismemberment of the owner. The police found three extra fingers, an extra ear, and an extra tongue when they recovered the body; Shigeharu has hallucinations of the body pieces.
Meanwhile, Asami goes to Shigeharu's house and finds a photo of his late wife. Enraged, she drugs his liquor. Shigeharu comes home, pours a drink, and is drugged. A flashback shows that the sack in Asami's apartment contains a man missing both feet, his tongue, one ear and three fingers on one hand. He crawls out and begs for food. Asami vomits into a dog dish and the man hungrily consumes it.
Asami injects Shigeharu with a
Cast
- Eihi Shiina as Asami Yamazaki (山崎 麻美, Yamazaki Asami)
- Ryo Ishibashi as Shigeharu Aoyama (青山 重治, Aoyama Shigeharu)
- Jun Kunimura as Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (吉川泰久, Yoshikawa Yasuhisa)
- Tetsu Sawaki as Shigehiko Aoyama (青山 重彦, Aoyama Shigehiko)
- Miyuki Matsuda as Ryoko Aoyama (青山良子, Aoyama Ryoko)
- Toshie Negishi as Rie (リエ)
- Shigeru Saiki as Toastmaster (酒場のマスター, Sakaba no masutā)
- Ken Mitsuishi as Director (ディレクター, Direkutā)
- Ren Ohsugias Shimada (芝田)
- Renji Ishibashi as Old man in wheelchair (車椅子の老人, Kurumaisu no rōjin)
Themes
Critics have considered Audition as both feminist and misogynistic.[6] Miike has stated that when he met journalists in the United Kingdom and France, he found they commented on the film's feminist themes when Asami gets revenge on the men in her life.[7] The film sets up Aoyama with traits and behaviors which could be considered sexist: a list of criteria for his bride to meet, and the phony audition format he uses to search for future wife.[8] Tom Mes, author of Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike, stated that the torture sequence, with the mutilation of Aoyama, can be seen as revenge from Asami.[8] Dennis Lim of the Los Angeles Times examined similar themes, noting that the film is "ultimately about the male fear of women and female sexuality" and that women are blatantly objectified in the first half of the film, only to have Asami "redress this imbalance" in the second half when she becomes an "avenging angel".[9] Chris Pizzello, writing in the American Cinematographer, stated that one plausible approach to interpreting the film is to see the final act as a representation of Aoyama's guilt at his mistreatment of women and his desire to dominate them. Aoyama develops a paranoid fantasy of an attacking object: because he harbours sadistic thoughts towards women, he develops a fear that the object will retaliate.[10] Contrary to this, Miike has stated that the final torture scenes in the film are not a paranoid nightmare dreamed up by Aoyama.[11] Tom Mes has argued against the feminist portrayal of the film, noting that Asami is not motivated by an ideological agenda, and that acknowledging that she takes revenge on a man who has lied to her would be ignoring that she has also lied to Aoyama.[8] Asami states "I want to tell you everything" during the torture scene, implying she had not been truthful before.[8] Mes also notes that the avenging angel theme contradicts a feminist-themed revenge interpretation, given that one of Asami's victims is female.[8][12]
In Audition, the character of Asami is a victim of child abuse. Colette Balmain, in her book Introduction to Japanese Horror Film, described Asami as "just one more face of the wronged women in Japanese culture... They are victims of repression and oppression, and only death and loneliness remain for them".[13] The film critic Robin Wood wrote that through her child abuse, Asami is taught that love and pain must be inseparable.[14] The audience is led to identify with Asami through this victimization and also what Stephen LeDrew described as a "patriarchal Japanese society".[10] Elvis Mitchell (The New York Times) stated that the theme of the film was: "the objectification of women in Japanese society and the mirror-image horror of retribution it could create".[15] Tom Mes suggested that these themes can be witnessed in the scene where Asami feeds her mutilated prisoner and then turns into the childhood version of herself and pets him like a dog.[16] Mes concludes that this is done to suggest that what had happened in Asami's life had made her the violent adult seen in the film.[16]
Production
Development
The main production company behind Audition was the Japanese company Omega Project.
Pre-production
To create Audition, Miike worked with many of his previous collaborators, such as cinematographer Hideo Yamamoto.
Actor Ryo Ishibashi wanted to work with Miike and agreed to the role.[26] He commented that despite not being a great fan of horror films, he enjoyed scripts, such as that of Audition, that showcased human nature.[26] Model Eihi Shiina was cast in the film as Asami. Shiina's career was primarily as a model and she only began acting after being offered a film role while she was on holidays.[27][28] Shiina first learned about Miike through his film Blues Harp, which made her interested in meeting the director.[29] When Shiina first met Miike, they began talking about her opinions on love and relationships.[30][31] On their second meeting, Miike asked Shiina to play the part of Asami.[32] Shiina thought that the opinions and feelings she expressed to Miike were the reason she was cast in the role, and she tried to play the role as naturally as she could without going over the top.[33]
Production
Audition was shot in approximately three weeks, which was about one more week than usual for Miike's films at the time.
The torture scene at the end of the film did not initially contain Asami's lines "Kiri-kiri-kiri".[38][39] Shiina was initially whispering her lines while filming this scene, but after discussion with Miike, the two decided that having her say these lines would make the scene scarier.[39] Ishibashi found that Miike was "having so much fun with that scene", and that Miike was especially excited when Ishibashi's character's feet are cut off.[40] For the special effects where Shiina's character places acupuncture needles into Ishibashi, special effects make-up was used to create a mask layer which was laid upon Ishibashi's eyes, which is then pierced by the needles.[41]
Release
Theatrical
Audition had its world premiere on October 2, 1999, at the Vancouver International Film Festival.[42][43] The premiere was part of a program of modern Japanese horror films at the festival, including Ring, Ring 2, Shikoku and Gemini.[44] Audition was screened at the 29th Rotterdam International Film Festival in The Netherlands in early 2000 where it was shown as part of a Miike retrospective.[3][6] Tom Mes stated that Audition received the most attention at Rotterdam, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize for the best film of competition.[6][45][46] The FIPRESCI award was given by a jury of international film journalists, who grant this award during the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Only films not in competition qualify for the award.[45] Audition also won the KNF Award, voted by the Circle of Dutch Film journalists.[47]
Audition was released theatrically in Japan on March 3, 2000.[2] When asked about the reception in Japan, Miike stated that there was "no reaction" as the film was shown in small theaters for a short theatrical run.[48] Miike followed up that the Japanese audience did not really know about Audition until it received a greater reputation abroad.[48] It received its American premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival in 2000.[3][49] The film was given its theatrical release in the United States on August 8, 2001.[50][51] It eventually grossed $131,296 in the country.[50]
In the United Kingdom, Audition received screenings in 2000 at both
Home media
Audition was released on DVD in the United States by Chimera on June 4, 2002.
Audition was released in the United Kingdom on DVD by
Reception
On
Ken Eisner (
Final sequence response
Writers for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Sight & Sound all emphasized the film's final scene. Scheck (The Hollywood Reporter) wrote that "Miike lulls the audience into a state of complacency with a studied, slow-moving, lightly comic first half before delivering a gruesome final section that makes Stephen King's Misery look wholesome"; the ending was "all the more shocking for the clinical way in which it is presented".[62] Eisner (Variety) stated that it is only at the ending of the film that Audition "breaks out of creepfest ghetto".[1] In his essay on themes in Audition, Robin Wood stated that most of Miike's films are disturbing for "what they have to tell us about the state of contemporary civilization; they are not in the least disturbing in themselves, operating on some fantasy level of annihilation, with 'comic-book' violence".[66] In comparison, he stated that Audition is "authentically disturbing, and infinitely more horrifying: the first time I watched it – on DVD, at home, after warnings I had received – I was repeatedly tempted, through the last half hour, to turn it off".[66] Wood compared the film to Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, stating that the film was "almost as unwatchable as the news reels – of Auschwitz, of the innocent victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Vietnam, victims of Nazi or American dehumanization".[66]
Of the film's success with Western audiences, Miike states that he was not surprised, but that he had "no idea what goes on in the minds of people in the West and I don't pretend to know what their tastes are. And I don't want to start thinking about that. It's nice that they liked my movie, but I'm not going to start deliberately worrying about why or what I can do to make it happen again".[67] Actress Eihi Shiina stated that, in Japan, only a certain type of film fan would watch Audition. By comparison, she said, the film was seen by many more people overseas, which she attributed to "good timing".[68]
Aftermath and influence
"I'm just curious how it'd look like if someone tried to remake my work. But I really believe that it's hard to remake of any of my work."
– Miike on being asked about his films being remade in Hollywood[69]
After the release of Audition, Miike was going to adapt Murakami's novel Coin Locker Babies, but the project failed to find enough financing.[70]
Audition has been described as an influence on "
Audition has been referenced in western popular culture such as comics, music videos, and other media.
Deadline reported that executive producer Mario Kassar had begun work on an English language adaptation of Audition in 2014.[83] Richard Gray was brought on to serve as the remake's director and screenwriter.[84] The film's storyline would be taken from Ryu Murakami's novel as opposed to an adaptation of Miike's film, and the film would take place in North America.[83][85] The new film would include scenes and locations in the novel that were not in Miike's film.[85] Kassar spoke about the remake in 2016, saying he was "almost there. It's taking me a long time because it is kind of hard to do this movie but I’m not going to do it unless I know I'm doing it right."[86]
See also
References
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- ^ a b c d Mes 2006, p. 391.
- ^ a b c d e "Vitagraph Films". Vitagraph Films. Archived from the original on November 21, 2008. Retrieved March 4, 2016.
- ^ "Audition (2000)". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
- Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 14 October 2019.
- ^ a b c Mes 2006, p. 181.
- ^ Miike, Takashi; Tengan, Daisuke. Commentary by Takashi Miike and Daisuke Tengan (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 1:02:50. FCD1208/1209.
- ^ a b c d e Mes 2006, p. 189.
- ^ Lim, Dennis (October 4, 2009). "'Audition': A Nightmare With No Escape". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 11, 2012. Retrieved April 22, 2016.
- ^ a b LeDrew, Stephen (January 2006). "Jokes and Their Relation to the Uncanny: The Comic, the Horrific, and Pleasure in Audition and Romero's Dead films". PSYART. University of Florida.
- ^ ISSN 0002-7928.
- ^ Mes 2006, p. 190.
- ^ Balmain 2008, p. 112.
- ISSN 1651-6826.
- ^ Mitchell, Elvis (August 8, 2001). "FILM REVIEW; Wife Hunting Sure Is a Sick And Frightful Business". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 5, 2014. Retrieved April 22, 2016.
- ^ a b Mes 2006, p. 188.
- ^ Mes, Tom. Commentary by Tom Mes (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:01:10. FCD1208/1209.
- ^ Mes, Tom. Commentary by Tom Mes (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:01:20. FCD1208/1209.
- ^ a b Mes, Tom. Commentary by Tom Mes (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:02:10. FCD1208/1209.
- ^ a b Mes, Tom. Commentary by Tom Mes (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:05:40. FCD1208/1209.
- ^ "Unagi". Cannes Film Festival. Archived from the original on March 12, 2016. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
- ^ Mes, Tom. Commentary by Tom Mes (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:07:50. FCD1208/1209.
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- ^ "Koji Endo". AllMovie. Archived from the original on June 4, 2016. Retrieved March 12, 2016.
- ^ Mes 2006, p. 375.
- ^ a b Ishibashi, Ryo. Ryo Ishibashi: Tokyo – Hollywood (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:04:30. FCD1208/1209.
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- ^ Shiina, Eihi. Eihi Shiina: From Audition to Vampire Girl (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:01:10. FCD1208/1209.
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- ^ Shiina, Eihi. Eihi Shiina: From Audition to Vampire Girl (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:03:10. FCD1208/1209.
- ^ Shiina, Eihi. Eihi Shiina: From Audition to Vampire Girl (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:03:19. FCD1208/1209.
- ^ Shiina, Eihi. Eihi Shiina: From Audition to Vampire Girl (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:04:03. FCD1208/1209.
- ^ Shiina, Eihi. Eihi Shiina: From Audition to Vampire Girl (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:04:49. FCD1208/1209.
- ^ Miike, Takashi; Tengan, Daisuke. Commentary by Takashi Miike and Daisuke Tengan (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:45:28. FCD1208/1209.
- ^ Shiina, Eihi. Eihi Shiina: From Audition to Vampire Girl (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:09:39. FCD1208/1209.
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- ^ a b Shiina, Eihi. Eihi Shiina: From Audition to Vampire Girl (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:11:04. FCD1208/1209.
- ^ Ishibashi, Ryo. Ryo Ishibashi: Tokyo – Hollywood (Blu ray (Disc 1)). Arrow Films. Event occurs at 0:15:00. FCD1208/1209.
- ^ Desjardins 2005, p. 205.
- ^ Crow, Jonathan. "Audition (1999)". AllMovie. Archived from the original on May 10, 2012. Retrieved March 4, 2016.
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- ^ "2000". FIPRESCI. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved March 4, 2016.
- ^ "KNF Award". International Film Festival Rotterdam. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved March 4, 2016.
- ^ a b Mes, Tom (August 2005). "Prelude to Pain". Rue Morgue. No. 48. p. 18.
- ^ Arnold, William (October 25, 2001). "'Audition' Has a Very Dark Side". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved March 4, 2016.
- ^ a b Audition at Box Office Mojo
- ^ a b c d Bitel, Anton (2016). Guilty of Romance: Love, Loneliness and Loss in Takashi Miike's Audition (booklet). Arrow Films. p. 8. FCD1208/1209.
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- ^ a b Schorn, Peter (March 17, 2006). "Audition (Uncut Special Edition)". IGN. Retrieved March 4, 2016.
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- ^ a b Scheck, Frank (August 21, 2001). "'Audition' Casts Scary Net". The Hollywood Reporter. Vol. 369, no. 34. p. 143.
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- ^ a b Phipps, Keith (October 24, 2007). "24 Hours Of Horror With Eli Roth". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on March 25, 2016. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
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- ^ "Olivia Rodrigo's New Music Video Is Packed Full Of References To The Meanest Girls In Cinema". Junkee. 2021-05-18. Retrieved 2021-08-06.
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- ^ a b Yamato, Jen (28 June 2014). "'Terminator,' 'Basic Instinct' Producer Piecing Together 'Audition' Remake". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 9 July 2014.
- ^ Child, Ben (30 June 2014). "Hollywood to remake Audition: English-language version of cult Japanese horror planned". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 July 2014.
- ^ a b Gingold, Michael (September 17, 2014). "Exclusive: Director Richard Gray talks the "Audition" remake". Fangoria. Archived from the original on January 2, 2015. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
- ^ Jaafar, Ali (May 12, 2016). "Deadline Disruptors: King Of Cannes Mario Kassar On The Glory Days Of Carolco, Why Buying Arnie A Plane Made Sense & Talking Vaginas". Deadline. Retrieved November 1, 2023.
Further reading
- Aston, James; Walliss, John (2013). To See the Saw Movies: Essays on Torture Porn and Post-9/11 Horror. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-7089-1.
- Balmain, Colette (2008). Introduction to Japanese Horror Film. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-2475-1.
- ISBN 978-1-84511-090-1.
- Hantke, Steffen (2010). American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-60473-454-6.
- Hantke, Steffen (2005). "Japanese Horror Under Western Eyes: Social Class and Global culture in Miike Takashi's Audition". In McRoy, Jay (ed.). Japanese Horror Cinema. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-1995-5.
- Mes, Tom (2006). Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike. FAB Press. ISBN 978-1-903254-41-7.
External links
- Audition at IMDb
- オーディション at the Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese)