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Audition
on DVD (1999)
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| Starring: |
Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Tetsu Sawaki, Jun Kunimura, Renji Ishibashi, Miyuki Matsuda |
| Director: |
Takashi Miike |
| Studio: |
TARTAN VIDEO |
| Run time: |
111 mins |
| Certificate: |
 |
| Collections: |
100 Top Thrillers |
| User collections: |
Greatest Horror Films., Horror Films To Cuddle Up To, disturbing films from around the world, Brilliant horror films that need to be seen to be believed, Most unsettling and scary list, Top 20 Lovefilm Rentals (June 2008), Asian extreme, Films to envoke a reaction, Best of the Best, There is more to cinema than Hollywood! |
| Genres: |
Horror, World Cinema |
| Languages: |
Japanese |
| Subtitles: |
English |
| Released: |
24/09/2001
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Brief synopsis of Audition
AUDITION is an art-house cult horror film that will be talked about for a long time to come. Ryo Ishibashi stars as Aoyama, a single father who has not dated since his wife died seven years earlier. To help find another woman to bring joy into Aoyama's charmless life, his best friend, television producer Yoshikawa, convinces Aoyama that they should add a fake part to a show they are auditioning actresses for--a role that will become Aoyama's real-life companion. After a series of comical auditions, in walks a woman whom Aoyama thinks is perfect--Asami, played by former model Eihi Shiina. But when Aoyama proves too tentative in his courting--and starts learning odd things about Asami's past--she decides to exact a revenge that filmgoers will never forget.
Director Takashi Miike's film, based on the novel by Ryu Murakami, begins like a slow-moving romance, carefully developing the characters and their maturing relationships. But suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the mood and pace change, smashing viewers over the head with fast cuts between the past and the present, with dreamlike images that turn into torrid nightmares, with screams and shouts where there had been soft-spoken whispers, with blood and violence that replaces love and longing. The last section of the film is one of the most brutal torture scenes ever put on celluloid, and it is definitely not for the faint of heart. But even in its gore-filled shockingness, the film is beautiful to look at, a monumental achievement by a director willing to take chances and challenge his audience.
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Related
Critics Reviews
Radio Times
Containing scenes of surreal violence and excruciating torture that many will find difficult to watch, this controversial psychological horror from cult Japanese director Takashi Miike could be a warped dream fuelled by tormented memory or an agonising hallucination revolving around the fear of a new relationship. It begins like a typical romantic comedy: a lonely Tokyo widower (played by Ryo Ishibashi) is persuaded to start looking for a new wife. With a producer friend, he holds a fake audition so he can screen a group of beautiful women — ostensibly for the part of a heroine in a new movie. But when the widower picks out an ex-ballerina (Japanese model Eihi Shiina) and tentatively begins to woo her, events take a terrifying turn. Like David Cronenberg, Miike doesn't provide his audience with easy answers, emotional respite or a safe conclusion. Instead, using stunning imagery and a mounting sense of puzzled dread, he puts true horror back into the genre. If you can stomach it, this profoundly moving film will leave you dazed.
New York Times
"...With a quiet that's meticulously transformed into moodiness and then fear-filled tension, the director Takashi Miike eases us in slowly....AUDITION doesn't let you down..."
Time Out
Seven years after losing his wife to cancer, video producer Aoyama (Ryo Another Lonely Hitman Ishibashi) finds the new...
Read more on www.timeout.com
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