For decades now, academics have examined the commentaries on gender that seemed innate to the horror genre. So ubiquitous is this trend that even the most casual of horror fans today will be eager to point out the gender discourses behind every proverbial “nude chase scene” with their gratuitous violence and laughably exploitative nudity.
Though there is still much fun to be derived from this formula, it is very refreshing to see the 1999 Japanese horror film Audition explore the genre’s mainstay theme of gender in such a fresh way – a perspective that is at once universal, dynamic and artful.
The film’s narrative skeleton is simple enough. A lonely widower, Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), gets talked into a cunning ploy by his film producer friend. Under the pretense of casting for a film, beautiful, young women are auditioned en masse as prospective partners for Aoyama.
Aoyama is instantly drawn to one candidate in particular, Asami (Eihi Shiina), and is enchanted by her submissive and mysterious qualities. As the couple begins to date, Aoyama begins to unravel the dark origins behind Asami’s demure nature and the scars on her body.
Director Takashi Miike does an excellent job. He ought to be commended on the restraint shown in the brilliantly methodical pacing of the film. The story flows leisurely and softly while the couple undertakes the blissful beginning of their courtship. Miike then subtly introduces elements of disorientation: from the quiet discomfort of fractured dialogue and discontinuous editing, to the skin-crawling revulsion of violent surreal flashback sequences. Fantasies blend into flashbacks, which blend into nightmare, constructing a world where the very worst a man fears about women (two-faced, manipulative, irrationally vindictive) and the very worst a woman fears about men (abusive, violent, exploitative) are manifested onscreen in very monstrous and real ways. The surreal narrative leaves viewers refreshingly aware of deeper understandings in the universal ways both men and women fear and exploit one another.
Still, no amount of deliberately sustained unease can prepare one for the shockingly intense ending of the film. Audition’s most iconic scene will leave even the most seasoned of horror veterans in shivers…
Let me put it this way: Miike’s contributions to the genre scored him a cameo in Eli Routh’s Hostel (2005), a film defined by its controversial tendon-snipping, eyeball-gouging scenes of gore. Audition’s climax outdoes all that by trading in gratuitous shock and violence with a deeply invasive and chilling portrait of cruelty you won’t soon forget.
Originally published in October 2013. Updated October 2015.
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