Event

Audition

Thu Feb 14: 7.30pm
Fri Feb 15: 7.30pm
Sat Feb 16: 7.30pm
Sun Feb 17: 7.30pm

Takashi Miike
Japan
1999
1h 55m
About
20th Anniversary!

One of the most well-crafted, impactful and infamous J-horror films ever made returns to the big screen. Audition was the turn-of-the-millenium flash point signalling the talent of Takashi Miike: a film artist twice as prolific as Fassbinder, a provocateur as multifaceted as Von Trier, and a genre-bender as bent as David Lynch. Shocking arthouse audiences worldwide with its white-knuckle finale and ingeniously Sirkian slow-burn leadup, Audition trailblazed a fresh Asian horror wave across American screens for which were eternally grateful.

Recent widower Shigeharu is advised by his son to find a new wife. On the advice of a film company colleague, they stage auditions for a new girlfriend that masquerade as an acting job. Shigeharu becomes enchanted with Asami a spooky twentysomething responsive to his charms. But this is no ordinary Fatal Attraction-style thriller, for it carefully pulls the audience through a wrenching exploration of deep male fears and the stereotype of submissive Japanese women. AGFA

A lethally poised Venus flytrap of a moviethe best-disguised psychotronic splatter flick in recent memory. Dennis Lim, Village Voice

A diabolically adroit piece of filmmaking that goes even further than the films of Italys excruciatingly macabre Dario Argento. Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

With escalating unease and a switch and bait that Hitchcock would be proud of, Audition culminates in its infamously disturbing dénouement. Rachel Bowles, The Skinny