Vital – (Japanese, subtitles, 2004) Following an automobile accident in which Hiroshi Takagi (Tadanobu Asano) suffers from amnesia, his first moment of recollection occurs when he rediscovers his medical textbooks, which he had put away when he quit medical school previously. Returning to the study of medicine, he becomes the top student in his college class, attracting the attention and affection of another student, Ikumi. Her instructor kills himself over losing Ikumi to Hiroshi.

As his memories return, Hiroshi also learns from his father that his girlfriend Ryoko had been in the car with him and died afterward from her injuries. Hiroshi and Ikumi are on the same dissection team for their first cadaver, which turns out to be Ryoko’s body. Mixed in with his memory recovery is a strange consciousness of visitations with Ryoko, who dances and pleads with Hiroshi not to leave her. Ikumi nearly goes insane trying to compete with Hiroshi’s affection for the deceased Ryoko. Hiroshi believes that he actually communes with her in a secret world they share and that she had somehow willed her body into his hands for dissection and the final ritual before cremation (the significance of the images of smokestacks at the beginning and later in the film).

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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