Miike's credentials aside, the film is hardly what I call sympathetic to the male lead. To me, at least, it feels like it justifies the kind of Cenobite caliber torture porn that he must endure for manipulating the woman. The man reluctantly agreed to the whole thing to begin with, he was hardly some kind of manipulative misogynist that such consequences were justified.
Fair enough. The movie is split in my mind right now. You've got his story--how he holds the audition, falls in love, and ignores her ugly side. Everybody tells him not to stay with her, but he does anyway. If anything, it's his bad luck. I know that's shallow, but it's a premise for the horror/torture porn scene (which did not end up being all that bad and I'm usually squeamish...)
Then her side of the story is how she's going to make him know "everything about her." As much as she is an object to him (and she is objectified in the first half of the movie), he's an object to her...to get back at the people who screwed her over.
Their stories tie together in that they've both known painful experiences. He lost his wife and is just trying to get along. She has been abused all her life..and it's just his bad luck that they had to meet. I think there's commentary about how her pain is greater than his or maybe it's just two different kinds of pain on display in the movie, which makes for a good suspense/thriller vehicle.
Suicide Club has a similar thing, where the detective has to "overpay" for things he did...
