Ôdishon (1999)

English title: Audition

A widower decides to remarry. A friend of his who is a film producer suggests that they use an audition for a new movie as a way for him to select his new wife. The widower's choice falls upon one of the candidates, a young woman with a sad story about her past. She turns out to be something quite different from what he expects.

This film made quite a splash among horror fans around the time it was released. Although I can understand the reason of its popularity among that kind of cinephile, I was myself underwhelmed by it. I guess it could not be denied that it is extremely gruesome in parts, and I strongly advise easily impressionable people against watching it; even somewhat callous viewers should beware, as it has scenes  of a physically repulsive and/or unsettling nature. But in the end of the day, what killed the film for me was the basic psychological inconsistency of the female character; also, some plot points had less than crystalline clarity. The female protagonist comes across simultaneously as a sadist and as an aggrieved woman. This was the first confusing point: although having that dual character is perhaps not an a priori impossibility for a real person, it was not a wise dramatic decision to make her so, because it makes it harder for the viewer to understand her. The event or events that trigger her fury are insignificant, and the film seems to mine that fact for a sort of dark humor. But if her anger is against all men, those insignificant events would not trigger anything, because she would just pick the first man who fell into her trap. It is also she who disappears without a trace at a certain point of their relationship; he, on the contrary, looks for her; thus, she had no plausible reason to feel mistreated or abandoned by him. These inconsistencies may suggest to some that she is just plain crazy, but the fact is that madness is not random; it must have some kind of inner logic. From all that it becomes clear that the only concern of the filmmaker is to produce a nightmare with as much shock value as he can achieve. Instead of just dismissing an incoherent mess of a film, viewers saw in it what they wished; thus, it was variously called "feminist" and "misogynistic", for example.

Rating: 30