Audition review

It's easy to spend a lot of the time staring at the back of your hand during the last half hour of this movie. Not through boredom (that comes earlier), but thanks to a brutally violent finale that is the somewhat illogical result of a meandering and disappointing film.

However, if needles and pins are your thing and the prospect of a stylish depiction of limb removal fills you with glee then this is the movie for you.

It's a surreal film which mixes fantasy and reality while taking the odd sly dig at contemporary society (particularly in its empty portrayal of modern day Japan), but ultimately it remains at heart a psychothriller with a ghastly and shocking ending.

Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) is a fortysomething widower and producer of what appear to be b-movies for the Japanese video market. His son, himself in the process of discovering girls, persuades him to consider finding a new wife. The more Aoyama considers the more he likes the idea and begins to shape in his mind the type of woman he would choose: younger, servile and 'partially trained' in one of the arts. When his colleague Yoshiwaka (Jun Kunimura) suggests the ploy of using a forthcoming film audition as a way of finding a suitable partner Aoyama is eager to participate.

While choosing the candidates from a pile of applications, he is immediately smitten by Asami (Eihi Shiina), a beautiful younger woman who has turned to acting after being forced to retire from ballet through injury. At the audition itself Asami turns out to be everything Aoyama has hoped for and his seemingly harmless ruse appears to be working. Drinks and dinner ensue, and soon Aoyama is confiding to his son that he plans to ask for her hand in marriage.

Up until this point the movie is laid back, lethargic even as the widower goes about his business with the nerves of a man rediscovering the dating game. But when colleague Yoshiwaka expresses some concerns as to the legitimacy of Asami's application, the seeds of doubt are planted. Aoyama decides to investigate his wife-to-be more thoroughly and sure enough he discovers inconsistencies in her background, which begin to take an unsettling and subsequently macabre turn. Director Takashi Miike then begins to employ flashbacks and dream sequences in order to jar the viewer's sense of comprehension so that by the end we are not quite sure what to believe.

And it is the end that is the talking point of the movie. The unexpected and prolonged torture sequence is a real test of what the viewer can actually mange to watch: after all, there aren't really any comfortable places to stick pins. Eihi Shiina shines throughout the climax and gives the strongest performance in the film as the servile and demure girl with a very hidden side to her character while the director cranks the horror up to grand guignol level. It's certainly not a movie to forget in a hurry but neither is it one which makes quite the impression it would like.