(2000; Ôdishon, Japanese) Seven years after his wife Ryoko has died, Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), who has created his own company and raised his child alone, considers remarriage after his teenage son Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki) remarks on his father's appearing dispirited. A friend says to Shigeharu: "All Japanese are lonely."

After confessing, "I wish there was a nice girl hiding somewhere," to Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura), another friend in the film industry, Shigeharu says he wants to meet as many women as possible to choose the ideal one. Yasuhisa devises a plan to audition women for a movie, the role requiring a part for a female meeting Shigeharu's description, which will allow the widower, posing as a producer, to select the best candidate for himself.

Assuring his friend ("Trust me") that only "unhappy people can act well," so Shigeharu's preference would not be likely to pass the screening, Yasuhisa provides applications from aspiring actresses for Shigeharu to select thirty with advice to ignore the photos and concentrate on the personal essays.

In conjunction with the movie project, an FM-radio station's program Tomorrow's Heroine covers the audition. Already smitten after reading the autobiographical composition (describing how her "dream died" when she suffered a hip injury at 18, forcing her to quit ballet) from the demur, submissive, 24-year-old Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina), appearing in a white skirt and top with long black hair, Shigeharu asks her several questions during the interview, unlike he'd done with any of the other ladies.

Yasuhisa cautions his "too hasty" friend: "But there's something I don't like about her." Further suspicions are raised when her references are nonexistent. Nevertheless, Shigeharu can't be deterred; he contacts the "beautiful, classy, obedient" young woman for another interview, during which she seems to explain away the incongruities of her résumé to Shigeharu's satisfaction.

In her apartment Asima sits waiting for her telephone to ring with a large white bag stirring, lying nearby. Attempting to follow Yasuhisa's advice to "cool down," Shigeharu finally rings Asima again. "I was longing for your call," she says.

Away to the shore for the weekend (having told his son he expects to propose and then introduce her), she removes her clothes in the hotel room and gets into bed: "Come to me…. Look at my body." The insides of her thighs are scarred from burns. "Please love me," she says to Shigeharu, whom she has called warmhearted, unlike other men: "Only me."

Up to this point in director Takashi Miike's spicy Asian fright film with chop suey, based on Ryű Murakami's novel (screenplay by Daisuke Tengan), there's little hint of the gruesome horror and graphic torture to follow Asami's mysterious disappearance from the hotel.

Shigeharu ignores Yasuhisa's recommendation to "forget about her," retorting: "I'll find her by myself." From an address on Asima's résumé, he locates the ballet studio where she danced, boarded up; but hearing someone inside playing on a piano, Shigeharu breaks in to find Mr Shimada in a wheelchair, who after asking if he has touched and tasted Asima, snickeringly says: "Go home."

Next he finds the Stone Fish in Ginza where Asima had told him she occasionally worked, but a man informs Shigeharu that it has been closed for over a year since its female owner was murdered, chopped up into pieces with extra parts (ear, fingers, tongue) the police found after reassembling the corpse.

Something enters Shigeharu's home before he returns, frightening his puppy; after listening to a message from his son saying he would be spending the night at a friend's house, he pours himself a paralyzing drink.

A painful past in which ballet helped purify her dark side, Asima explains to Shigeharu about her childhood of unhappiness that after her parents divorced when she was seven she lived with an aunt and uncle who abused her; her mother remarried a crippled man who was even more cruel to her in his demands that she dance for him. Believing that he is like other men who only wanted to exploit her for their own desires, she takes out the fantastic fury of her revenge on Shigeharu: "Words create lies. Pain can be trusted."

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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