Audition (1999) | Sympathy for the Devil

Audition reads much like an anime, as in such brilliantly-contructed, dreamlike sequences beginning with protagonist Shigeharu's (Ishibashi Ryo) waking up in the hotel room the morning of his marriage proposal and continuing when after drinking from the bewitched liquor bottle, he collapses backwards in a soft, slow-motion on and into the carpet.

In this movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie structure, these actions serve as bookends, post signs around which the dreams, fantasies, and dark fears that manifest in whirlwind fashion gain incremental meaning and depth when such convolution could easily have devolved into a confused, labyrinthine mess. Miike's genius is evident, in that adapting Murakami Ryu's short story, he succeeds wildly in transposing the literary form to the screen with deft pacing and the clever tying together of images that drives the story forward towards the clarity of denouement.

The ride there is dark, obviously so in light of the barbarous culminating scene of torturous cruelty which serves to underscore the horrors of child abuse underlying the main character-cum-aggressor Asami's (Shiina Eihi) back story. It's a classic case of the abusee becoming the abuser. For all its extreme nature --the scene is iconic in the genre of J-horror-- strangely, somehow there is sympathy built in here for her somewhere.

Of note: Murakami's book was rereleased in January of this year.

dir Miike Takashi

Audition trailer: