Directed by: Takashi Miike
Written by: Ryu Murakami, Daisuke Tengan
Starring: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Tetsu Sawaki
1 Hour, 55 Minutes
Buy now from Amazon.con: https://amzn.to/2IgVkTP
Ryoko dies in the hospital with her husband, Aoyama, by her side. He and his son go home alone. Seven years later, he’s still single. He has a business dinner with an associate who is in the movie business. Aoyama has decided he wants to remarry, but he doesn’t even have a girlfriend. Ideally, he’d like to see many women and choose one, but he’s getting old and his son says he’s plain.
His friend, Yoshikawa, has the perfect solution. He’s casting a movie, and Aoyama can be involved with screening the actresses. They make a contest out of it called “Tomorrow’s Heroine,” and they advertise it all over the radio. Aoyama reads the many applications and says “It’s like buying my first car.” He has to narrow it down to thirty. He looks at Asami’s application and likes it a lot.
The interviews begin. Aoyama is as nervous as some of the girls. Finally, Asami comes in, dead last on the list. Before the interview is over, Aoyama is sure she’s the wife for him. She was going to be a ballerina before she injured her hips, and he thinks her sadness makes her stand out.
Yoshikawa has a bad feeling, and he says he doesn’t like her; “It’s something chemical,” he says. Aoyama is not deterred. He calls her on the phone that evening. He asks her to meet, and she agrees, Yoshikawa calls him right after he hangs up with her, and says Asami’s former boss simply disappeared about a year ago. They can’t reach anyone who knows her, and her references aren’t panning out either. Yoshikawa is very suspicious and warns Aoyami not to move too fast with her.
Asami seems very shy on their “date,” but they seem to get along fine. He waits by the phone, hoping she will call him back. We see that Aoyami has a female coworker who has a crush on him, but he’s oblivious. His cleaning lady seems to have a thing going for him as well, but he only has eyes for Asami. He finally breaks down and calls her. She smiles evilly as the phone rings; she’s got another one!
They go away together for the weekend. He’s nervous, but she undresses and she makes him examine her entire body. When he goes to sleep, she disappears.
At about an hour and ten minutes in, we get our first hint that this might be a horror movie. Up to this point, it seemed like a typical tame Japanese romance story. Now Aoyama tracks down her old ballet instructor, hoping for an address, and we get a flashback about how this old man tortured and burned Asami when she was a child. The old man refuses to help and throws Aoyama out.
He then goes to the bar where Asami worked, but the owner was murdered about a year ago. Her body was chopped up and they found her when her blood ran under the door. When the police tried to piece her body together, they came up with an ear, three fingers, and a tongue left over.
Aoyama gives up and goes home. He has a much-needed drink and passes out. That drink shouldn’t have been that strong, should it? No, it’s drugged, and he passes out on the floor.
He has a strange dream where he sees the large sack Asami keeps in her room. The bag opens and a man with no feet, several missing fingers, and no tongue crawls out. Asami pukes into a bowl and feeds it to him, and the man eats it eagerly. The she beheads the old dancing teacher, who was really her stepfather.
As he starts to wake up from his dream, he sees Asami come in, wearing rubber gloves and an apron. She’s paralyzed his nerves, so he cannot move, but he’s awake and can feel everything. She begins with a sackful of acupuncture needles, in the belly and then in the eyes. Next, she cuts off his feet. His son comes in and she comes up behind him–
And then Aoyama wakes up in bed with Asami. It was all just a dream. No it wasn’t. He wakes up and his son has kicked her down the steps and killed her. The end.
Commentary
This was nineteen years before Harvey Weinstein, and the whole “producer hooking up with actresses” idea wasn’t seen as quite so sketchy back then and probably even less so in Japan. Still, Asami went quite a bit further than a simple #metoo hashtag.
The film is very slow, but it’s creepy enough that you stick with it, and it doesn’t get boring. The only real plot hole I noticed is how did Aoyama know about the sack with the man in it? He dreamt about it, but he’d never actually been to her apartment, and I’m sure she didn’t tell him about it.