Audition (1999)

“All words are lies. Pain doesn't lie."

This is a famously disturbing horror film that it’s taken me twenty years to see (1999 being twenty years ago is wrong on all sorts of levels) and it’s well worth it. A sweet if gently misogynistic drama for most of its length, the film suddenly piles on the torture towards the end as all the unthinking misogyny of the earlier scenes gets its extremely painful comeuppance. This is an interesting film to see in the wake of #MeToo.

The plot is simple; lonely widower Aoyama wants a new wife, the subtext being that he wants her to do all the traditional feminine jobs of looking after him and leaving him just to work, while needing to be accomplished herself. At a friend’s suggestion he takes part in a series of auditions for a part in a film which never happens, at which the women are asked a series of bizarre and impertinent questions by their male interlocutors.

Aside from the auditions themselves, though, the misogyny is constant but subtle as Aoyama settles on Asami, a mysterious woman whose true past and true proclivities and abused past are hidden behind an exterior that seems to be quite passive and traditionally feminine. And then she disappears, things are not quite right, the direction turns very unnerving and adopts the grammar of the horror film, and the torture begins. A haunting and highly effective film with a serious point, and the harsh revenge of the abused and objectified woman. Superb, and Eihi Shiina is magnificently disturbing.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

"Your instrument is quite impressive..."

I saw this film at the pictures back in 2003, when I was still in my twenties. I enjoyed myself, but never somehow got round to seeing part 2, something which will, I assure you, be remedied within the week. I liked the film then; I like it just as much now, having seen it for a second time.

It's often said of Quentin Tarantino that his main distinguishing feature is the aestheticisation of violence. This film could be said to be the purest expression of that, jettisoning Tarantino's trademark dialogue for an entire film's worth of beautifully shot ultraviolence. The film takes its time in showing us what is really a very simple plot: the Bride, in revenge for the deaths of her new husband, the baby in her belly and everyone present, sets out to kill the first two of five people responsible for her wedding day massacre.But this film is all about form- aesthetics- over content in the best possible way.

Forget realism. This film takes place in a universe where, even post-9/11, planes carry holders for passengers' samurai swords and there exists no pesky law enforcement institutions to rudely interfere with one's mission of revenge, Thgis is Tarantino's tribute to both Japan and to the Hong Kongmartial arts films from the '70s, beginning the film with an explicit tribute to Shaw Brothers and casting Chia-Hui "Gordon" Liu. Most of the film consists of the Bride's meticulous yet fantastical assassination of O-Ren Ishii, a delightfully entertaining baddie who, in a film chock full of superb female roles, assumes the role of main baddie with aplomb, vying well with the Bride in who can generate the biggest jets of CGI blood via the severing of various major body parts.

The direction is superb, with cam era angles to dies for and flashbacks marked out both by use of monochrome and animation. The multinational cast hints heavily at the film's Eastern origins and, while the lack of flashy dialogue or, indeed, of flashy narrative, makes this no Pulp Fiction, I look forward to the second part...