Audition: Film and Novel Review
CHARACTERS:
Aoyama - a 42 year old depressed widower whose wife passed away 7 years prior to the events of the story.
After the death of his wife, he states that he has two goals: spend a lot of time with his son Shige, and bring a famous German pipe organist to Japan (so he can record the performance and sell it at his distribution company), both of which he accomplishes.
He's seeking a new wife at the suggestion of his son, but feels out-of-touch with the dating scene (despite being an admitted cheater and womanizer, in the novel moreso than in the film). He has high standards for any potential future brides, desiring only women with a past of studying classical skills such as ballet or piano.
He's relatively naive for being as old as he is, and trusts Asami implicitly despite everyone in his life being wary of and uncomfortable with her. He holds auditions for his new wife under the guise of trying to cast the female lead for a new movie, at the suggestion of his friend, Yoshikawa.
Ryoko - Aoyama's previous wife and Shige's mother, who died of cancer 7 years prior to the events of the story. In the novel, it's mentioned that she comes from a rich and well-connected family. After her death, Aoyama makes use of these connections.
Shige (called Shigehiko in the film) - Aoyama's precocious 15 year old son. He differs quite a bit between book and movie, but the throughline is that he deeply loves his father and his dog, a beagle named Gangster (called Gang in the film)
Shige is smart, mature for his age (in the book, not so much in the film), and very popular at school. In the film he has a girlfriend, and is obsessed with Dinosaurs. Shige kickstarts the plot in both the film and novel by telling his father he should try to find a new wife.
Yamasaki Asami - Asami is the 24 year old object of Aoyama's affections.
She auditions for Aoyama's "film project" (aka wife search) because she resonates deeply with the story, being a former ballerina herself. Aoyama falls for her instantly after reading her personal essay, because of how candid she is and also because she says losing ballet was like accepting death, which he relates to his feelings at the loss of his wife.
Asami has a dark and traumatic past of abuse at the hands of her disabled stepfather, and seems to leave a trail of broken and disfigured men in her wake. Her ultimate desire in the novel is to be loved completely and solely by the man in her life, a task Aoyama can never accomplish because of his love for his son, whom Asami doesn't learn about until after she has sex with Aoyama.
In the film, she and her motives are depicted quite differently, with her torturing Aoyama because of the audition scheme itself being a ploy to attract women for sex. In the novel, she never learns that the auditions were fake.
Her weapon of choice is piano wire, which she uses to removed the lower legs and feet of her victims.
Yoshikawa - Aoyama's business partner and close friend. Yoshikawa is the one who initially suggest the idea of the fake movie, and masterminds the plan to attract women to the auditions with a radio broadcast about the plot of the fake film they're 'making'.
Yoshikawa is almost immediately suspicious of Asami, because she names someone as her mentor in her interview who ends up having died a year prior. He's wary of her at every turn, but Aoyama doesn't listen, and only gets more and more frustrated with him.
(will eventually be adding an edit here! stay tuned!)
AUDITION (オーディション) is a 1997 novel written by Japanese postmodern novelist RYU MURAKAMI. It is also a 1999 film by the cult-famous and incredibly prolific TAKASHI MIIKE, and is arguably one of, if not the, most popular film he's directed, at least among fans in the West.
The film and novel both follow Aoyama, a widower, as he attempts to find a new wife through a creepy film audition scheme planned and orchestrated by him and his business partner, Yoshikawa. He decides to do this after his 15 year old son, Shige, tells him at dinner one night that he should try to find a new wife.
There's a lot to like about both the film and the book, but I greatly preferred the book. The film restructures the plot in a way that I didn't quite enjoy, and the motivations of our eventual antagonist, Asami, are changed. The film is incredibly stylish in true Miike fashion, but it rushes through the plot in the first half of the film, and drags through the last 10 pages of the book for the last hour of the runtime.
Somehow, a quick-to-read 200 pg. novel had a better and more satisfying slowburn than a 2 hour long film did. The sex scene being moved to the middle of the film had me questioning what in the world was going to happen with the rest of the runtime. I didn't like some of the film additions either, such as the dream sequence after Aoyama gets poisoned by Asami, though it was certainly better than the drug-induced sex haze of the novel, which was a serious low point because of the awkward and incredibly unsexy descriptions of Asami's body.
There's also the actual torture scene at the climax, where Aoyama is drugged by Asami and abused- in the novel, Asami tortures and kills Aoyama's pet beagle while Aoyama slowly works on trying to get feeling back in his hands and body. He manages it, and does a clever trick with the remote for his stereo system, causing the music to blast loudly and distract Asami. A breaker is flipped when Asami eventually manages to cut the cord to the stereo system, and it leaves them in total darkness as Asami searches for the fuse box.
During this time, Aoyama manages to nearly make it up the stairs in his home to Shige's room on the 2nd floor, where he'd be able to call for help. Asami catches up with him right before he makes it, and removes one of his feet with her piano wire, though he manages to kick her down the stairs before she can do anything else, and Shige returns home soon after and kills her with a knife he'd found under the wine rack earlier in the novel.
The novel ends with Shige asking "What was that all about?" and Aoyama saying, "I don't know. Nothing, really."
The whole climax takes place in the span of about 20 pages, with maybe 30 pages of more obvious build-up before that, but I found it very tense and effective.
In the film, Aoyama doesn't have any clever tricks, and he's layed out on the floor while Asami punctures him with accupuncture needles, chanting kiri kiri kiri (deeper, deeper, deeper) as she works them deep into his face and abdomen. She then removes his lower legs with her piano wire.
She's much more strange and methodical in the film, where she's furious and frustrated in the novel.
Shige returns home and manages to kick her down the stairs, to her assumed death. Asami also kills their pet beagle in the film, but it's off screen, and you only see the body. I don't think the novel's version of Gang's death would work in the film, because you barely spend any time with him in the film. He's mostly in the background, and you don't really get to hear about what he means to Shige.
Audition, at it's core, feels like a feminist story written to push back against Japanese dating culture and everything that comes along with it. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite pushed far enough or condemned enoug, though Aoyama did lose a leg for his troubles. I felt sympathy for both Asami and Aoyama- and disgust at both of them too, but moreso for Aoyama, despite the fact that Asami literally tortures people.
Aoyama is easy to like even though he does a lot of scummy stuff - he beleives in fairytale romance and love at first sight (though he had a fairytale romance with his wife, and repeatedly cheated on her). He deeply loves his son, but ignores him when it comes to Asami.
And then there's the auditions themselves - It's disgusting to hold auditions for a film (that you hope will never exist, that was specially designed to entice young women) so you can survey the women who apply in the hopes of find a young, well-studied, classy wife.
Aoyama is initially uncomfortable with the auditions- not because it's underhanded and wrong to manipulate and oogle at women, many of whom strip or share extremely personal information during their auditions - but because he isn't sure if he can fall in love with an actress-type.
He's taken in by Asami's perceived innocence - she is 18 years his junior, a fact that Shige points out to Aoyama. In the novel, he asks her to marry him before it's even made clear that they're in a relationship, which she initially runs away from (literally, physically runs away) until Aoyama follows her and begs reciprocity from her.
Asami is a deeply traumatized and incredibly abused woman, who, yes, should not be torturing and disfiguring people, but she has been nothing but abused by men her entire life. How is she supposed to know the true intentions of Aoyama, a man who is, once again, 18 years her senior, old enough to be her father, a man who, unbeknownst to her, only knows about her because he lured her in specifically with the intentions of finding a wife?
From before the start of her relationship, Aoyama was manipulating her, regardless of if his intentions were pure or not, or if his love was genuine or not.
This is where i feel the film and novel both fall flat- neither of them truly codemn Aoyama for these actions. I do appreciate the way Murakami picks at Japanese dating culture, but it could've gone farther. And in the end Asami still the villain, solely, regardless of her trauma or her feelings. She is mentally ill and taken advantage of at every turn in her life. I can't help but feel quite sad for her, with everything said and done.
Am I not supposed to feel sorry for her? How can I not, given her background? The answer, from both formats, seems to be "No, you are not."