CULTJAPAN!

Audition is a 1999 Japanese film directed by Takashi Miike and starring Ryo Ishibashi and Eihi Shiina. It is based on a Ryu Murakami novel of the same title.

Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a middle-aged widower who lost his wife to an illness seven years prior, is urged by his 17-year-old son, Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki), to begin dating women again. Shigehiko is somewhat doubtful of his father’s love life, but plans to move out when he finishes school and does not want his father to be alone. Aoyama’s friend and colleague, Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura), a film producer, devises a plan to hold a mock-audition, in which young, beautiful women would audition for the “part” of Aoyama’s new wife, under the impression that they are auditioning for a new film, but actually so Aoyama can marry one of the finalist contestants.

Aoyama is immediately enchanted by Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina), a 24-year-old woman with a soft voice and reserved, yet confident, mannerisms. In her audition, Asami says that she was once a ballerina headed for greatness, but had to give up dancing after an injury. Aoyama, still reeling from the death of his wife, is attracted to her apparent emotional depth.

Yoshikawa warns him about Asami, saying that he has a bad feeling about her. None of the references on her resumé were able to be reached and her job history is shaky. The music producer she claimed to work for had gone missing. Unfortunately, Aoyama is so enthralled by her inner and outer beauty that he is blinded by his feelings for her.

She lives in an empty apartment, furnished only with a burlap sack and a telephone. For days following the audition, she sits perfectly still in the middle of the floor next to the telephone, waiting for it to ring. When it finally does, the burlap sack lurches across the room and makes gurgling sounds. She ignores it as she waits a few rings before answering.

When Asami answers the phone, she confesses to Aoyama that she never expected him to call. After several dates, she agrees to accompany him to a seaside hotel. Once at the hotel, Asami tells Aoyama about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child and shows him the burn scars on her body. Asami asks Aoyama to love only her. Aoyama promises to do so and they make love.

The next morning, Aoyama is awakened by a telephone call; it is the front desk wondering if, since his companion left, he too would be checking out. He realizes Asami is nowhere to be found. Using her résumé, Aoyama searches in vain for her.

Aoyama visits the old ballet studio where Asami claimed to have trained for 12 years. He finds that the studio is now inhabited only by a disabled old man in a wheelchair with artificial feet. The man reveals that he caused the burn scars on Asami’s legs while sexually assaulting her as a child.

Then he goes to the bar where Asami used to work and someone tells him that it has been closed for a year because the woman who was in charge, the wife of a record producer, was found dismembered. When the police put her body back together, they found 3 extra fingers, one ear, and one tongue.

Asami goes to Aoyama’s house during his search. Once there, she finds a photo of his dead wife. Enraged, she slips a sedative in his drink and hides. Aoyama comes home, has a drink and faints. The movie cuts to a sequence about Asami’s past and present. In one scene, Asami is seen finishing her dinner. She then vomits into a dog dish. The contents of the burlap sack are revealed: it is a man missing both feet, his tongue, one ear and three fingers on one hand – the missing record producer. He crawls naked out of the bag, sticks his face in the bowl of vomit, and hungrily consumes it.

A while later, Asami returns to the drugged and paralyzed Aoyama. As she walks into the room, the audience sees the twisted body of Aoyama’s pet dog. She proceeds to inject Aoyama with an agent that paralyzes his body, but keeps his nerves alert. Then she tortures him with needles in his abdomen and under his eyes. As she is torturing him, she tells him he is just like everyone else, in not being able to love only her. She talks about how he has love for his son (whom she plans to kill as well) and their dog, and how this is not acceptable, because then he will never be completely hers. Her torture of him, she explains, is to teach him the meaning of needing someone. She then cuts off his left foot with a piano wire.

While Asami is about to begin cutting off his other foot, she is surprised by Aoyama’s son returning home. She hides and prepares to attack Shigehiko. Shigehiko walks in and discovers his father on the floor, turns and is surprised by Asami. Then the movie flashes to a scene of Aoyama waking at a beachside resort with Asami resting peacefully next to him. Asami fails to disable Aoyama’s son with a spray bottle of paralyzing fluid, and is kicked down a flight of stairs, breaking her neck, and Aoyama tells his son to call the police.

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