Vitâru

After a tragic car accident where his girlfriend Ryôko Ooyama (Nami Tsukamoto) died, Hiroshi Takagi (Tadanobu Asano) suffers amnesia with his memories completely blanked. When he sees a book about dissection, he decides to join the medical school with the support of his parents. In the dissection class, his group participates of the autopsy of a young woman, and while cutting apart the tissue, he partially recalls his accident. Later, when he sees a tattoo in the arm of the corpse, he discloses that she was his girlfriend and becomes obsessed to go further in the examination of the body.

This is the first work of director Shinya Tsukamoto that I have had the chance to watch, and I liked very much what I saw. This weird, original and fascinating story is disclosed in an adequate pace and supported by wonderful work of camera and lighting. The central lead cast trio, with Tadanobu Asano, Nami Tsukamoto and Kiki, together with the supportive cast, have also great performances. I intend to see this movie again in a near future, since I saw a DVD spoken in Japanese with English subtitles and therefore I may have missed details on the magnificent image. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Not Available"

It seems the majority of people who see Shinya Tsukamoto films are people who are fans of his to begin with. I am definitely a fan and have seen almost all his films - "Bullet Ballet", "A Snake of June", "Tokyo Fist", "Tetsuo 1&2". Tsukamoto is one of my favorite directors. In my opinion, he towers above most other film makers. His style is totally unconventional and he tends to make movies that can't easily be categorized, so fan-boy types tend to ignore him as overly "artsy", while lovers of more lush, slow-moving Japanese films tend to see him as overly frenetic and violent. Plot and linear narrative is typically incidental in favor of emotional catharsis (his films rarely wrap themselves up neatly, if at all - which can infuriate people). He tends to find a subject and fetishize it (guns in "Bullet Ballet", voyerism in "A Snake of June", metal and machinery in "Tetsuo", physical strength in "Tokyo Fist") rather than follow a standard "he did this, she did that" plot thread.

I would call "Vital" his warmest film to date. This is clearly a more toned down and relaxed Tsukamoto. Perhaps a sign of the director's move toward middle-age. There is very little of the manic hand-held camera work and thundering music from his earlier films. It's mostly static, beautifully framed images of non-moving people. Almost like paintings. Gone also is the furious video scramble editing technique that was taken to such wild extremes in "Bullet Ballet" and "Tetsuo".

The plot involves a young man recovering from amnesia after a car accident, who enters med school only to find the first cadaver he dissects is his old girlfriend (who died in the car crash). The memories start coming back to him, but the young med student (having no memory or reference point for the memories) instead begins to treat them as daydreams, and possible realities.

It sounds creepier than it actually is. The film is basically a love story, and quite a wistful one at that.

Highly recommended.

This film really gave me an impression and was for myself a very memorable experience.

Like many others i was also quite surprised about the emotional and gentle character of this film. Before starting to watch i prepared myself for something extreme and uncompromising like i experienced in many Shinya Tsukamoto's films. But that is a good thing for this film; making it possible to reach a broader audience. And it definitely deserves it.

Technically this film is superb. Lighting and camera were excellent .. and the colors ... Sound design and music weren't that demonstrative but still played, in a subtle way, an important role. Acting was also impressive. Tadanobu Asano, one of my favorite actor since Ichi the killer, was a perfect fit. Nami Tsukamoto was very scary, in a good way ;). But she doesn't have a record at IMDb yet. I wonder why .. her acting was very promising. And letting Kiki perform modern dance was for the atmosphere and art-style a very good idea.

To sum the story up, by leaving all the artful details behind, you could say it is about the painful yearning for the loved one. This was extremely good implemented. Just everything, art, sound and acting supported the presentation of this yearning.

This is one of those films you don't simply watch. You have to experience them.

After the surrealness of the Tetsuo films and the blue filters and voyeurism of Snake of June, I was not sure where Tsukamoto would go with this film. I saw it as part of the London FIlm Festival and it was one of my favourite films.

The story is of a Hiroshi (Asano Tadanobu) suffering from amnesia (as a result of a car crash in which his girlfriend dies) slowly regaining his memory through performing an autopsy on her. It raises questions on the nature of the self and how mutable it is.

For example, Hiroshi was pressured in to becoming a medical student, but he rebelled and became a drifter. After the crash he loses his recent memory, but he is inexplicably drawn to study medicine. Is this the call of his nature or a way of healing? Once the trauma's of teenage years are stripped away and we return to the core of the self before social conditioning steps in, are we more innocent or closer to what we can become? All this may sound very deep, but this film is all about childhood/innocence and the self in my opinion.

Pretty different from the other three films mentioned above, but still has lots of blue/grey filters and an extremely acute sense of sound. Some of the autopsy scenes have some wonderful slurping noises and tension that really set me on edge.

I normally watch films with no expectations or anticipation of what they have to offer but I wish I'd done some background reading on "Vital" before I settled down to view it. Expecting a horror film, I was left disappointed. Described as a thriller, I didn't find "Vital" particularly thrilling or attention grabbing.

While the film is beautifully shot, the movie relies on mood to keep the viewer engaged with what is unrolling on the screen. In the end, though, it's a somewhat confusing meditation on death and left me feeling more than a little frustrated.

6 out of 10. This is a stylish entry in Asian cinema but it lacks substance. I've no doubt it will delight some viewers but it will frustrate in equal measure.