whynotsmile

What the hell? I bought this as a blind buy(which I do often and am rarely dissapointed) and I will soo be trading this in.

First of all, the film was slow. I don't mind a film that takes its time to get where its going, but this was too much. I enjoyed the characters and the basic plot, but it was so lifeless and uninteresting in its direction and dialouge that I started to doze off. It didn't work as a drama or a comedy or as anything. It just sat there.

And then began the climax of the film. While much more interesting visually, funny and disturbing than the boring first half what a shame it made no sense whatsoever.

So she drugs the guy because she is pissed he lied to her (how did she find out?) gives oral to him and he begins to see her as her younger self and as his ugly secretary(???)and then she begins to torture him. His son comes home and he kicks the woman down the stairs and breaks her neck. but wait! its all a dream! no wait! its not a dream. or maybe it is. who knows? who cares? THe last 30 minutes were the most bizzare I have ever seen in a film. It was darkly funny and the torture scene was brilliant but god damn was it all pointless. I got all the flashback stuff, how she was abused when she was young, but still I had narly a clue what the hell was happening and why.

I can't understand how anyone could find this scary at all.

What are your thoughts on it? How are Miike's other works compared to this?(this was the first one I saw of his) and is japanese horror cinema usually slower paced? The only other Japanese horror flick I saw was RINGU and while that was good (a masterpeice compared to AUDITION) I still like the big hollywood remake more. RINGU was just too damn slow.

As much as I hated Audition, there were some stuff I just loved.

1. her teacher/agent/whoever was in the bag. He had no tounge and only one finger on one of his hands. when he motioned for the woman to bring his dog dish of her vomit to eat, it was disturbing and hilarious.

2. when she is torturing him, that little noise she makes when adding the acupuncture needles. (english translation was "deeper, deeper")

3. Foot cutting scene. I loved the use of the wire instead of a usual knife.

RichC2

Welp I wrote this big thing out and it got erased, thanks a lot IE.

Basically I always figured the ending was a dream, the last 30 minutes. (Thus he wakes up during the torture scene, a climax-ish scene.. I've also heard he was just trying to escape the pain, which works but whatever.) So what you have is a man who lies and cheats to get a woman to appease his emotions and appease his son. Woman has mysterious past and man tries to figure out who she really is in his head.

Come the hotel scene - he starts dreaming what would happen if his woman found out about him lying, mixed with rumors he's heard about her (missing managers, her stories of her youth, etc; ) pile on a bit of guilt and you've got one ****ed up dream.

But that's just me, I saw this movie in the same time frame as Mulholland Drive and I'm sure that impacted my take on the movie a little bit.

I personally like the movie, it isn't scary - but is oddly hypnotic to watch at times.. the only real "sick" scene is her feeding the gimp some of her own vomit.. kinda nasty there.

badger1997

Damn, if you found the gimp with no tongue and missing fingers eating her vomit "hilarious" I'm a bit worried.

I didn't think it was too boring at all in the beginning. It took a while to get there but considering what I heard about the film, it was a great anticipation as I waited for whatever nasty, shocking thing was waiting for me at the end.

I really thought the whole thing was well made and very interesting. It definitely is haunting too and sticks with you long after you've seen it. That's the kind of movie I really like, when months later you find yourself turning it over in your head all of a sudden during a free moment.

I have no way to compare this to other Miike films because this is the first one I've seen. I've been wanting to catch a few more, but have no idea where to start and have to fight to find time to watch them anyways with two kids in the house and a wife who is especially squeemish around that kind of stuff.

Supermallet

I think that this was a daring piece of filmmaking. It started as a domestic comedy, turned into a relationship drama, and ended as an S&M nightmare. And the whole thing was done in an assured manner, Miike always knew what he was doing. This actually isn't my favorite Miike film, but it is so well done that it is one of his that I admire the most. And if you liked the American Ring more than the Japanese Ring, then I can say it's a safe bet that Japanese horror cinema isn't for you, in general.

At no point did I think this was a horror film. Of course, I don't think of The Silence of the Lambs as a horror film, either.

Luther Heggs

Two things about the last 30 min of Audition:

1. The widower comes to see, hear, and know things about the girl that he would have no way of experiencing. I see it as an extreme case of Stockholm Syndrome, except at an extra-sensory level.

2. Watch the episode of Monty Python called "The Cycling Tour":

Man is due to be executed, falls asleep in his jail cell, wakes up in a deckchair in the backyard of his boyhood home with the his mother serving him juice.

- "So, it was all a dream!"

- "No dear, this is the dream, you're still in the cell."


And if you want to see a fast-paced Miike movie, see Ichi The Killer.

RichC2

Naw, see I actually prefer The Ring to Ringu but am still a huge fan of Japanese horror, I can also admit when it's done better (imo), still a huge matter of opinion.

I like Miike flicks simply because they're unlike any others I've seen... I mean when's the last time you saw a female teacher give her female transvestite student a BJ?

MrN

It worked for me as a chauvinist nightmare.

Read some other thoughts here:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/Audition-1109602/

whaaat

I haven't seen that particular skit, but it sounds like the end of
Having only seen Dead or Alive (now there's a mind-**** of an ending) and Fudoh, I would have to say that this is a very atypical movie for Miike. Much more sedate, slowly paced and not so over-the-top. And for this particular film, it works. The slow pace draws you into the movie, characters and situation, so when the ending comes, it seems that much more horrible because everything's been treated so realistically up to that point. I think that's something that Miike mentioned on his commentary-ette over the ending, that he wanted to make the ending as realistic as possible. It's almost Hitchcockian, in the way it implicates the viewer's voyeurism. "You wanted to know where this movie's going? Here's where it's going!"
I wouldn't classify it as a horror film either, though there's an unsettling creepiness that runs through most of the movie. In a way, I think that's why the film's so effective, because you keep wondering what her deal is, and what's going to happen, and then you find out. and it's worse than you could possibly imagine.

Oh, and the acutal audition scene is possibly the most exuberant 10 minutes in cinema. "Have you ever seen a Tarkovsky film?"

jayson1017

During the audition scene, one of the questions he asked to measure the intelligence of the person:

'Have you seen any Tarkovsky films?'

Amusing.

Patman

Horrifying dialogue:

"kitty kitty kitty"