Hey folks, Harry here with Capone's look at some... ahem, strange flicks...
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here. I’ve got a couple little indie number here that should be hitting theatres gradually over the next couple of weeks: AUDITION and VENGO. I know in Chicago, they both open up November 30 at the ever-wonderful Landmark Century Centre theatre. Both are worth checking out, but be sure to bring your vomit bags to AUDITION.
AUDITION
I remember a couple years back when I purchased the original ARMY OF DARKNESS limited edition DVD from some dude on e-bay. Along with the DVD, he sent me a video tape of a Japanese film (I’ve forgotten the title) that featured a man kidnapping a woman, tying her to a table, knocking her out, and meticulously dismembering her. There was almost no dialogue, no story, just mutilation for the sake of it. It was so cold and bleak that I became depressed watching it. The gore effects weren’t entirely realistic, but it was close enough. After the relatively short film, there were commercials for other similarly disgusting movies made by the same company. I remember advertising a film where a guy tries to kill himself repeatedly, but is somehow made immortal. This, of course, doesn’t stop him from continuing his suicidal efforts. That one at least looked like a sort of funny comedy, but there were others where women were abducted and tortured with boiling water, pins, hypodermics, you get the idea. I loaned the tape to a friend and told him to dispose of it when he was done. I only watched the tape once, but I’ll never forget it. I did a little research at the time and apparently these kind of films are a small genre out of Japan that are somewhat popular. Okay…
Which brings me to Takashi Miike. I’ve seen two of his films: the utterly vulgar and totally entertaining gangster film DEAD OR ALIVE, and his latest, a freakish love story called AUDITION. DEAD OR ALIVE featured barely veiled references to bestiality, a woman drowning in a kiddie pool of her own shit, and more blood than I’ve seen since Peter Jackson’s DEAD ALIVE (what a coincidence with the titles, eh?). I don’t know enough about Miike to be sure, but he must have been influenced by the borderline snuff film like the one I saw. The difference is that Miike puts together extremely interesting plots and often delves into the psychological aspects of his characters. In AUDITION—which is about as mainstream as this twisted fuck is going to get—Miike spends the first hour of this two-hour piece getting us to really care about his leads, especially Shigeharu Aoyama, as a middle-aged widower and single father, who is just now, seven years after his wife’s death, considering getting married again. He has no idea how to find a suitable woman, so he enlists the help of a friend in the movie business to set up auditions for a character in a movie. Not surprisingly, the character will have all of the same qualities that Aoyama is looking for in a woman. Even before the auditions, Aoyama spots a woman he likes from a photograph in the figure of Asami, a much younger, timid and beautiful woman with a mysterious past. The more Aoyama digs into Asami’s life, the stranger things get. And what starts as a delicate, simple love story turns into an absolute nightmare that the faint of heart should stay the hell away from (re-read the first paragraph of this review for a hint at what I’m talking about).
AUDITION jolted my mind like it hasn’t been for a long, long time. I’m itching to see more of Takashi Miike’s work. He’s clearly capable of making films like so many of the more established and serene Japanese directors, but he doesn’t want us to feel comfortable for too long. AUDITION grabs you be both shoulders and shakes the shit out of you. Is that enough of a build-up for you? Alright, go see the film and tell me if I’m lying.
VENGO
Tony Gatlif is all about the music. In previous films, such as LATCHO DROM and GADJO DILO, he has woven the music, dress, and spirit of his native Gypsy community into beautiful set pieces that rely little on story but turn up the fantastic music. His latest, VENGO, is no exception…well, maybe it is. The vibrant music is still in place, but Gatlif seems to have decided to dispose with plot altogether, which is unfortunate. If he wanted to make a documentary about Gypsy music, he should just done it and stop messing around with sub-standard plots about family feuds and gangster-like revenge killing. It cheapen what is otherwise an amazing work. Still, if you’ve never seen one of Gatlif’s films, VENGO’s as good a film as any to start with; just don’t assume it’s his best. The other two I mentioned are much better.
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