Audition (1999)

Deceptively innocent at first, Takashi Miike’s Audition finds Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi, Suicide Club, The Grudge), a middle-aged widower of many years, urged by his teenage son and his film producer friend Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura, Ichi The Killer) to get out and start dating again. To help Aoyama meet women, Yoshikawa devises a plan to hold a fake audition for a leading lady. Reluctantly agreeing, Aoyama auditions 30 young hopefuls and falls for the silent beauty of Asami (model/actress Eihi Shiina), a former ballerina with a dark past. Their courtship veers from quiet romance to psycho nightmare, realizing “a sadistic breach of contract between filmmaker and audience of which Hitchcock could only dream.” (Richard Falcon, Sight and Sound).