Ahhhh, what a fantastic way to start! Audition is a personal favourite of mine, it's place on this list might confuse anyone who has seen it, but it does belong here.
Audition is a very dark drama about a man called Shigeharu Aoyama, in the opening scene, his wife and the mother of his child dies. 7 years on, he decides to, with a little push from his son, to get back into the dating scene. He speaks to a friend, who suggests they hold auditions for a film, which is never actually going to go into production, so he can find a woman. He falls for Asami Yamazaki upon simply looking at her application, she is a young, pretty girl, with a tragic past. The auditions are a great source of comic relief. After this, we get a developing love story, gone horribly wrong.
I'm gonna start by saying that this film looks beautiful. The cinematography is amazing, I mean, some of the shots are so well thought out. The use of colour is also incredible, which might sound like such a media student thing to say. Unlike a lot of horror films, which like to use a blue/grey hue, Audition uses a warm tone for most early scenes, but that does change later on, although it is completely appropriate. Asami is always dressed in white, which could be of some significance, as she is supposed to be naive and innocent. As the film's plot gets darker, so do the scenes, we see a change in colouration of critical scenes.
The acting in this film ranges from good to great, with a believable performance of a man in love by Ryo Ishibashi, the fantastic acting of a friend concerned by Jun Kunimura, and creepy scenes with Asami's old ballet teacher, but Eihi Shiina really steals the show with a portrayal of a young innocent girl turned psychotic girlfriend. The dream-like sequences show a little of her twisted side, slowly revealing more as the film goes on, we see her sitting in front of her telephone, with a huge bag in the background. In other, the bag moves. Then, in yet another, Shigeharu is told the truth of Asami's background, his dead wife tells him not to marry her, and we get the reveal of what's in the bag. A man with his tongue removed and several fingers missing, who is forced to eat vomit like a dog. It's a stomach churner, for sure.
Yes, let's talk about that scene. You're all going to tell me how tame it is compared to other titles on this list. And needles in the most painful points in the body might sound horrific, which it probably is, but it is tame. But sometimes we don't need gratuitous violence for a film to be disturbing. It's not even that graphic, but her level of calm, her supposed innocence, her speeches and the fact that she would hurt someone who cared about her so deeply is what makes this such an effective scene.
I need to touch on the pacing of the film before I delve into themes and commentaries. Some might say this film is boring or slow. But I think the pacing of this film is deliberately calmer, until the end. I mean, 3/4 of the film is their relationship developing. It's only when he starts to discover her past, things really speed up.
And so, the themes. The loss of innocence turns this girl into a twisted mess, the abused becomes the abuser, because no one ever showed her love, so she didn't know how to handle it when someone did. All she ever knew was control and abuse, what we see as a viewer is a classic abusive relationship, taken to an extreme. She becomes possessive in the integral sex scene. We see the culmination of this possessiveness in the final scene, as she claims that because he couldn't love only her, and loved his friends and family, that he was a liar and only pain would show his true self.
This film is incredible, and I highly recommend it to literally anyone. The most disturbing thing about this film is not gratuitous violence, or rape, but very simply the extreme depravities of human nature, and the cycle of abuse.
9.5/10
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