A man in a bag is worth 4 in the eyes

Hmmm....I just saw Miike's "Audition-The Director's Cut" (1999) and if you've seen the movie it makes the elongated title quite appropriate and somewhat funny. "Audition" is one of those films that when it ends I think to myself "Did I like that?" These types of movies usually stick in my brain and the answer is eventually that I in fact did like the film. This movie has been rolling around in my brain but I'm not sold on it, at least not yet.

The real mystery of this film is the dual conversations between the two principals of the film. We see the same scene but with completely different dialogue. One of which has to be fantasy and the other reality. The problem with the apparent hallucinations, visions and alternate dialogue of the lead is that there is no defining split between the two worlds. Is that a problem? I think it can be if you want your film to be given the esteem its obviously striving to achieve.

Some are easy to figure out. For example, he never actually went to her house and saw the "man in the bag". He never knew where she lived and the two places he visited for clues didn't offer any (the bar and the ballet studio). From the people he meets at those locations and listening to their testimonies must have led to his imaginary state of being in her apartment. The story of the missing record producer and the dissected bar owner lead him to that vision. An interesting clue might be the vision of seeing his dead wife at a restaraunt warning him about this mysterious woman. Was she trying to warn him in his dreams? Was all the alternate dialogue and visions coming from the grave? That's the best guess I have for the key to unlock this movie. At the end of the film, when his son pushes the woman down the stairs she says to the man with one foot, "I waited so long for you to call". Maybe he didn't? Maybe he did. That's where the film fails in my opinion.

The interesting thing about this film is that usually someone subjected to this type of cinematic punishment deserves it. You almost begin to cheer for that villian in some cases. The fact that the lead was a celibate widower for 7 years, a good father and friend, makes in doubly disturbing and Hitchcockian. You know, an "everyman" put in a F'd up situation to fend for himself. All in all, it's a flick worth seeing however frustrated it may make you. Then again, if you are a budding vivisectionist this just might hit the sweet spot.