Vital (2004)

dir Tsukamoto Shinya

The working title of the film was "Dissection Film Project," if that's any indication of what to expect here.

According to Shinya, his films study the relationship between humans and Tokyo. Human existence is seen as fading, the physical existence waning while the brain/mental capacity increases. As for his need to show us dead bodies in Vital, the intention is to wake us up to the fact of being alive and real, shaking us up from our dream-state, virtual-reality, sanitized, city-dwelling existences.

Asano Tadanobu, often described as a very natural actor, plays Hiroshi, a man with no memories who struggles to come to terms with the amnesia-inducing accident that caused his lover Ryoko's (Tsukamoto Nami) death. His stoicism works well, and though brooding and in turmoil, he plays this with a reticence that makes the role very convincing.

As in The Fountain, Vital's antihero is a practitioner of science and the medical arts who engages the techniques of the field to attempt to retrieve the departed lover. Vital's Hiroshi, fatefully tasked with the dissection of his lover's body, is based on Leonardo da Vinci, who conducted dissections in order to sketch the underlying structures to the surface that is skin. With his long hair and demonstrable sketching prowess, Hiroshi unflinchingly seeks the deeper knowledge that the brutal scrutiny and systematic taking apart and drawing of the body may give.

Like with Jodie Foster's character in Contact, Hiroshi undergoes a dreamlike sequence where he is allowed to spend time with his lost love from beyond the void of death. Super-thin dancer Ryoko flexes her skills in an over-the-top, beach dance number in which she flings her body around, throwing herself forcibly and repeatedly to the sand. Several moments of visual and aural cacophony occur, quite beautifully done, with a repetitive cymbal striking reminiscent of Japanese theatre.

When cool but pretentious med-student Ikumi (Kiki), who's into sexual asphyxiation, is unable to break though to Hiroshi, she complains to the point: "What about those of us still living?"

Check out this Tsukamoto Shinya interview by Mark Shilling on Vital.

This is the trailer: