Audition

Director: Takashi Miike

1999 / 115min / 35mm

Among the great bait-and-switch acts of film history, Miike’s masterwork begins as a reserved, melancholy, almost Ozu-esque study of a lonely widower (Ryo Ishibashi) and his desperate attempts to find a new romantic partner, then turns into… something very, very different. Our hero appears to find the answer to his dreams in the form of a retiring ex-ballerina (Eihi Shiina), so sweet that he can overlook that strange laundry bag on her bedroom floor as he pursues his new romance, the shocking outcome of which proves the adage, “Be careful what you wish for.”

Print courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive