The Indy Film Club: How Audition helped Takashi Miike become the godfather of ultraviolence

The film went on to influence filmmakers such as Eli Roth of ‘Hostel’ (2005), helping to kick off the ‘torture porn’ trend of the early 2000s, writes Clarisse Loughrey

Asami – dressed in fetishistic leather – screeches ‘kiri, kiri, kiri’ (‘deeper, deeper, deeper’) as the needles plunge in (Rex)

No film pulls the rug from under its audience quite like Takashi Miike’s Audition. It opens on a boy, bouncing down the corridors of a hospital. He clutches a homemade diorama emblazoned with the words “Dear Mom, get well soon”. Seven years later, we see the now-adolescent boy and his widowed father, as they live together in blissful bachelorhood: they fish, fuss over the dog and lament their housekeeper’s cooking skills. Flash-forward to the end – dear father is lying on a mat, his feet sawn off with piano wire and acupuncture needles sticking out of his eyes. The route to such horrors defies every expectation.

Audition is perhaps the greatest demonstration of Miike’s crazed brilliance. He’s famously prolific, with over a hundred features, TV productions, music videos and short films under his belt – in every imaginable genre, from zombie musicals (The Happiness of the Katakuris) to superhero films (Zebraman). But the films primarily exported to the west, and responsible for his reputation here, are those of a more exploitative, nihilistic flavour. Ichi the Killer (2001) features a man suspended from meat hooks and drenched in hot oil until his flesh starts to moult. No wonder Quentin Tarantino declared him “the godfather of ultraviolent, get-under-your-skin movies”.

Since much of the violence is implied and not shown (often through a sickening use of sound), Audition is on the tamer end for Miike. But it’s formidable in how deftly it manipulates its viewers. Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) is encouraged first by his son to find a new wife, then by his friend Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura) to use his powers in the film industry to field potential candidates through a fake casting call. Romcoms are packed with these kinds of elaborate ruses – and Miike wears their inoffensive tone like a disguise. His framing of the story is reserved and traditional, while Koji Endo’s soundtrack edges into saccharine. It’s almost dull in places.