{Ôdishon}
 Uncut Special Edition --- Subtitled --- A middle aged widower is urged by his teenage son and film producer friend to start dating again. They devise a plan to hold a phony film audition to meet new women. The widower falls for a beautiful ballerina with a suspicious past and their courtship veers from polite romance to psycho-nightmare! Storyline: In Tokyo, Shigeharu Aoyama is a widower that grieves the loss of his wife and raises his son Shigehiko Aoyama alone. Seven years later, the teenage Shigehiko asks why his middle-aged father does not remarry and Shigeharu meets his friend Yasuhisa Yoshikawa, who is a film producer, and tells his intention. However, Shigeharu has difficulties to approach to available women to date and Yasuhisa decide to organize a sham audition for casting the lead actress for the fake movie. They receive several portfolios of candidates and Shigeharu becomes obsessed by the gorgeous Asami Yamazaki. Despite the advice of the experienced Yasuhisa, Shigeharu calls Asami to date and he falls for her. But who is the mysterious Asami? Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Cast Notes: Ryo Ishibashi (Shigeharu Aoyama), Eihi Shiina (Asami Yamazaki), Tetsu Sawaki (Shigehiko Aoyama), Jun Kunimura (Yasuhisa Yoshikawa), Renji Ishibashi (Old man in wheelchair), Miyuki Matsuda (Ryoko Aoyama), Toshie Negishi (Rie), Ren Osugi (Shibata), Shigeru Saiki (Toastmaster), Ken Mitsuishi (Director), Yuriko Hirooka (Michiyo Yanagida), Fumiyo Kohinata (TV station presenter), Misato Nakamura (Misuzu Takagi), Yuuto Arima (Shigehiko as a child), Ayaka Izumi (Asami as a child). User Comment: Ivanhoe Vargas (nycritic) from Jersey City, NJ, 17 February 2005 • It's no secret that most, if not all, of the best horror films being made today are being made not in Hollywood but overseas: namely Asia. Stories not about ghosts, but about the simplest of acts, are being told with horrific overtones, and this is one of the best. Real horror is not about the actual confrontation between the hero/heroine and the monster in the attic, but about the anticipation leading to that encounter where we see an impending sense of wrongness, of something terrible lurking just around the corner that may have an equally horrible gift in tow. Takashi Miike, the true star and ringleader of this disturbing foray into terror, brings us a (deceptively simple) set-up about a TV producer, Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), who is looking for a bride by the use of an ruse: an "audition" for a "film." (It all has the lighthearted tone of a romantic comedy of manners, depicting sexual attitudes in a totally different culture.) Once he settles for a shy girl dressed in complete, virginal white, Asami, (Eihi Shiina), the stage is set for their subsequent meetings as he is drawn closer to her allure despite the fact that her resume has some seemingly glaring holes -- people she's been associated with have gone missing. When Aoyama decides to call Asami, we're introduced to the most disturbing scene in the movie: her empty apartment, her figure seen sitting by the phone and a large canvas bag (seen near the background). Once the phone rings, the canvas bag suddenly jerks, Asami coldly smiles, a scene that totally switches the romantic tone of the film and makes a subtle left turn into what can only be considered a surrealistic nightmare or a bad acid trip that is devoid of "true resolution" -- by Miike's own words. It becomes Asami's story, her reenaction of a trauma inflicted on her by a sick older man, with Aoyama as her newest victim. Definitely a powerful film with layers of subtext and a study on how to create a convincing horror story in which we are the monsters and agents of our own entrapments, and that even monsters were once battered children. Summary: Complex. Fascinating. IMDb Rating (03/14/15): 7.2/10 from 49,457 users IMDb Rating (11/22/05): 7.4/10 from 5,970 users
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