Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 10/14/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, October 14, 2024

Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999)

Eihi Shiina in Audition

Cast: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Tetsu Sawaki, Jun Kunimura, Renji Ishibashi, Miyuki Matsuda, Toshie Negishi, Ren Osugi. Screenplay: Daisuke Tengan, based on a novel by Ryu Murakami. Cinematography: Hideo Yamamoto. Production design: Tatsuo Ozeki. Film editing: Yasushi Shimamura. Music: Koji Endo.

Takashi Miike's Audtition evokes so many genres -- the femme fatale fable, the succubus myth, feminist revenge stories, body horror, even torture porn -- that it risks being overloaded with subtext. At the same time, combining all of those themes and tropes is what makes it rise above most horror movies. It's both gripping and audacious. Much of its audacity lies in the creation of an initially sympathetic protagonist, Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), whom we originally see at the deathbed of his wife with his young son, who has just entered the hospital room with a present for his mother. Years later, we see Aoyama with his son, Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki), now a bright, handsome teenager with a pretty girlfriend and an absorbing interest in paleontology. Aoyama realizes that now that his son is almost grown up, he'll be left alone, so in a conversation with a friend, a film producer, a scheme is hatched: They will put out a casting call for young women, and in the audition process Aoyama will find another potential wife. Almost immediately, Aoyama is drawn to the beautiful Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina), whose résumé says she trained in classical ballet until she incurred a hip injury and is now only partially employed in a bar. Aoyama's infatuation will slowly turn into terror. The moral crux of the film lies in whether the grisly punishment Aoyama receives fits the crime, his sexist attempt to forestall his loneliness. On that score, at least, Audition fails: Asami's actions go well beyond anything endorsed by the Me Too movement. So in the debate whether Audition is feminist or misogynist, I have to conclude that it's neither. It's just a well-made horror movie without a message of any coherence.