Takashi Miike
Audition

A good film must be able to convey the same emotions that the actors feel on stage: involving the viewer, thus making them an actor as well. It seems like a daunting task, and it is, but Miike, a great Japanese director of masterpieces like "Visitor Q," "Gozu," "Ichi The Killer," and "The Call," has succeeded: "Audition" is his least linear, most complex work, yet so disturbing it becomes almost real.

Miike is a scrutinizer of souls and always knows how to surprise, how to scare you to death: it's not the screams and scares of Western horrors that truly frighten humanity, but a gesture, a simple gruesome gesture performed at the least expected moment. And that's what happens in "Audition," where a girl with a dark past suddenly becomes a tormentor, making the only person who truly loved her suffer. But for Asami, pain is a way to love and to be loved: cutting off feet as security that the lover will not run away from her, feeding him with her vomit, so that he can somehow eat her, because the vomit is part of her.

Then it doesn't matter if the images we see are reality or the protagonist's nightmares, the images that unfold disturb in a sublime way regardless of their nature. Asami's metamorphosis, shy and defenseless, fragile and delicate, comes unexpectedly like a stab in the back. From victim to tormentor: the renunciation of her own dream (dance) taken away by the teacher who abused her and burned her hips, makes her evil and she decapitates the dance master with a metal wire. "You're beautiful," he whispers to her while he plays the piano and drops of blood begin to fall on the keys.

"Audition" is therefore a metaphor for love, the most extreme love, the truest love, the love of a girl tired of being mistreated, terrified of being abandoned by those who truly care for her, outlined in a successful mix of horror and love story. The fake audition the man stages to find himself a wife seems like a joke of destiny: indeed, immediately upon reading Asami's resume, the man becomes hypnotized; the two lovers were destined to meet, and Asami will do anything to ensure they are not separated.