Synopsis
A lonely Japanese widower whose son is planning to move out of the house soon expresses his sadness to a friend and fellow film producer, who becomes inspired to hold an audition for a non-existent film so that the widower can select a new potential bride from the resulting audition pool. The widower ultimately becomes enamored with and fascinated by one particular young woman...but first impressions can often be horribly wrong....

Review
Director Takashi Miike uses flawless pacing to spin the tale of Aoyama, a lonely widower who is an all around good guy. Realizing he's not getting any younger, Aoyama starts thinking a new wife is the answer to his happiness. With the help of his friend who is a fellow movie producer, plans are laid out to stage fake auditions for a film. Almost instantly Aoyama falls for Asami, a beautiful soft spoken former ballerina who is everything he has wanted. The two grow closer and everything seems right in the world. That is until Asami vanishes. Aoyama, guilt ridden for lying and driven by love is determined to find Asami. Some digging stirs up some things about Asami that don't make sense. Asami soon reappears with terrible plans for Aoyama.

This is simply a story of a lonely guy trying to find love. Its not until the second half that we see things are not what they seem with Asami. Unfortunately for Aoyama, by the time he gets some of his questions answered we have arrived at the ending. I will say for me one of the reasons the finale has the impact that it does is because the film moves into nearly real time. Up until the end it has moved along at a pace like most others. A day may last 5 minutes, a car ride 20 seconds, but when Asami decides to take her time with Aoyama we have to suffer thru every excruciating second.

Audition is Miike-san's best known work, and would make a great introduction into Asian horror for the uninitiated. Just be prepared to go "Deeper Deeper".


Cast
Ryo Ishibashi- Shigeharu Aoyama
Eihi Shiina- Asami Yamazaki
Tetsu Sawaki- Shigehiko Aoyama
Jun Kunimura- Yasuhisa Yoshikawa
Renji Ishibashi- Old man in wheelchair
Miyuki Matsuda- Ryoko Aoyama
Toshie Negishi- Rie
Ren Osugi- Shibata
Shigeru Saiki- Toastmaster
Ken Mitsuishi- Director
Yuriko Hirooka- Michiyo Yanagida
Fumiyo Kohinata- TV station presenter
Misato Nakamura- Misuzu Takagi

ohmy this movie sounds pretty good. i'll put it on my to-watch list haha

the beginning was a bore but then it picked and got better towards the end

didn't like, but if you like movies like Saw, or Hostel.. you'll like it

Good movie, but I don`t know very many Japanese people who have seen it, or even heard of it actually. I was pretty surprised, because I came to Japan and was like "Haven`t you heard of this movie? it`s awesome!"...but yeah, that could also have to do with the fact a lot of my friends are 16 year old girls who are afraid if a cat meows. >.> But yeah, I think right now Love stories are more popular (at least in Fukuoka, since girls get discounts on wednesdays at the movie theater! It`s so kick but!)
Koizora and Closed Note and stuff like that. But... long live japanese horror! woot!

(12-29-2007 03:13 PM)okamisamaEGOgirl Wrote:  Good movie, but I don`t know very many Japanese people who have seen it, or even heard of it actually. I was pretty surprised, because I came to Japan and was like "Haven`t you heard of this movie? it`s awesome!"...but yeah, that could also have to do with the fact a lot of my friends are 16 year old girls who are afraid if a cat meows. >.> But yeah, I think right now Love stories are more popular (at least in Fukuoka, since girls get discounts on wednesdays at the movie theater! It`s so kick but!)
Koizora and Closed Note and stuff like that. But... long live japanese horror! woot!

didn't like it.

Ending is so brutal, one of best Miike's films, and he's my favorite director.[/u]