Vital

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Review

This is a somewhat confusing film and rather difficult to say whether it's good or not. The basic story is about Takegi, who had a girlfriend named Ryoko. They were in a car accident and she is killed, and he suffers almost total amnesia.

Later, he enters medical school and during a dissection class he finds out he is going to dissect Ryoko's body. There's also a female student who seems to be interested in him and is also working on Ryoko's body.

That part is pretty straight-forward. Where it gets to be hard to figure is the scenes which seem to involve Takegi meeting the now-dead Ryoko in some kind of alternate reality/dimension where she is on a beach. Takegi becomes more and more obsessive in his dissection, going far beyond what the students are expected to do, making numerous very detailed drawings as he does his work.

That's about the best I can explain what is happening. There are also some very artsy scenes which tend to make no sense and detract from the overall movie.

This isn't a horror movie, in my opinion. I think it's some kind of psychological movie, about a man trying to deal with the death of someone who his girlfriend, and whose body he is not dissecting.

Oh, yes. There are also some scenes of mutual strangling that happen that make absolutely no sense.

Synopsis

Takegi wakes up in a hospital suffering total amnesia. He doesn't even recognizes his parents. He ends up going to medical college and gets his own (rather nondescript) apartment. Then we learn about a girl from the school that is almost stalking him. The woman that is doing this had a relationship with a teacher there, and the teacher kills himself (although we don't see that).

Takegi does very well in his studies. Three years later he's taking a dissection class. The doctor tells the students to treat the bodies they are working on with respect. The woman stalker and Takegi are working on the same body, although she has some major problems with the dissection, having to walk out and compose herself at times.

Then there are the first of the strangle me-strangle you scenes which don't seem to make any kind of sense.

The movie then reveals that Ryoko, the girl Takegi had liked, died in a car crash and it's her body he is going to have to dissect. Then we start the arty sequences (that also make little sense), and see how Takegi seems to be acting somewhat strange during the dissection, something that is noticed by other students.

There's a scene with Ryoko where it appears that she was having some kind of major mental problem. Meanwhile the police call Takegi and he goes to their office, finding the stalker woman there. She asks him why is he still chasing a dead woman when he can have one who is alive.

Ryoko's father admits Ryoko had basically given up on living. She wanted to donate her body to science after the accident. Interspersing all this are various beach scenes with Ryoko and Takegi.

At the end of the dissection the teacher has the students do a very respectful arrangement of their coffins, and then the coffins are taken to a crematorium.


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