Audition (1999), aka Ōdishon aka オーディション, Arrow remaster, directed by Takashi Miike, encoded in 10 bit HEVC with AAC sound, including original Japanese theatrical 5.1, two commentary tracks, and English subtitles.

IMDb : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235198/

Video encoded in two-pass 10.5 Mbps x265 10bit with the veryslow preset for archive quality image.

English subtitles OCRed, proofed and corrected. English subtitles for Japanese commentary converted to VobSub and repositioned.

Note : Takashi Miike's notorious international breakthrough has been noted for the gradual tonal shift from the innocent, but sad and somewhat ominous early parts of the movie to the over the top shocking violence of the ending, and that's probably one of the reasons it works so well. On the other hand, I think some of the storytelling, especially revealing a lot of important information in an extended dream sequence, is a bit lazy, and while the cinematography in itself is nice, the image quality is grainy and kind of ugly. Still, performances are uniformly great, the ending delivers a gut punch, and all the attention Miike received for it was well deserved all in all. Oh, and Yoshikawa is played by Jun Kunimura, who we last saw being extremely creepy in the wonderful The Wailing.

The story is simple, widower Aoyama is encouraged by his son to find a girlfriend and remarry, and his film producer friend Yoshikawa suggests setting up a fake audition to find girls for Aoyama to date. Aoyama is immediately drawn to the quiet, formal, and mysterious Asami, who seems to be the perfect woman, but something about her seems off to Yoshikawa, and all her references turn up as dead ends. Still, Aoyama persists, they start dating, but little does he know where he's going to end up when she feels he doesn't keep up his promise of loving only her...

This BluRay is good quality, but as mentioned above, the original image is grainy and kind of ugly, I'm assuming this is a conscious creative decision of some kind. The 5.1 track is good, the director/screenwriter commentary is interesting, the Miike biographer commentary is perhaps a bit dull. In general, all you could ask for.

Hot tip
Quote: