'AUDITION': THANK YOU, THAT'S ENOUGH.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Not a good date movie.

I've used that term before. But I've never meant it more than as it applies to the Japanese squirmfest ``Audition,'' a film that takes the ``psycho'' part of psychosexual to breath-stoppingly dire new extremes.

In other words, it's sick, and unapologetically so. But it is also a well-crafted, unfailingly imaginative exploration of male guilt, female rage and the sheer terror obsession and commitment can inspire. It's a horror movie rooted in such dark, sad aspects of human behavior that the alarming imagery director Takashi Miike eventually thrusts upon us seems as heartbreakingly apt as it is nauseatingly original. This is a go-at- your-own-risk movie, but it does offer rewards to those inclined to take the dare.

Sins of the father figure loom large in Daisuke Tengan's screenplay, which is based on a story by Ryu Murakami. What's interesting is that the central male pig here, Shigeharu Aoyama (played by Ryo Ishibashi), is more than borderline sympathetic. Widowed seven years before the film's main action, he's lovingly raised his son, Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki), into a fine young man. Aoyama runs a successful video production company, where he apparently had an instantly forgotten, one-night affair with a female employee, and has otherwise remained single and celibate since his beloved wife's passing.

But now he's getting lonely and has no clue as to how to seek a prospective new partner. A filmmaker buddy suggest the sleazeball option of holding ``auditions'' for a movie that won't be made as a means of meeting the hottest young actresses in Tokyo. Hundreds apply, but early on Aoyama fixates on a beautiful, demure and mysterious ex-ballet dancer, Asami Yamazaki (played by fashion model Eihi Shiina).

Feeling guilty about the deceptive way they met, Aoyama seems to accept it as fair play when some of the information from Asami's resume and interview proves to be false. Or maybe he's just blinded by passion; anyway, it's right after their first lovemaking that Aoyama begins to discover the true nature of Asami's damaged soul ... but not the appalling extent of it until it's too late.

Or does he really? Maybe the only thing Aoyama learns about is his own, royally disturbed feelings about love.

Part polemic and part dream piece, the film plays like a psychologically coherent David Lynch nightmare - that makes Lynch look like a wimp, by the way. Along a more culturally specific continuum, Japanese film buffs probably remember a 1970s taboo-breaker, Nagisa Oshima's ``In the Realm of the Senses,'' that followed an addlingly lusty affair to an alarmingly cutting conclusion. While that film was graphically Freudian, ``Audition'' approaches some of the same issues - abandonment, exploitation, the thin mental and physical membranes that separate pleasure from pain - with sadistic ingenuity.

And with bloody-minded humor, no matter how grotesque things get. You know how people who've been in long-term relationships often say, in regard to the prospect of dating again, ``It's scary out there''? ``Audition'' can be viewed as one extended joke on that ... but, of course, only by those who can stand looking at it.

``AUDITION''

(Not rated, no one under 17 admitted: violence, graphic torture, nudity, sex, drug use, children in jeopardy)

The stars: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Tetsu Sawaki, Jun Kunimura.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Takashi Miike. Written by Daisuke Tengan, based on Ryu Murakami's story. Produced by Akemi Suyama and Satoshi Hukushima. Released by Cinematheque Presents/Vitagraph Films.

Running time: One hour, 55 minutes.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.

Our rating: Three stars.