Vital (DVD)

Hiroshi Takagi (Asano) is a young man who has just regained consciousness having slipped into a coma following the horrible car accident which claimed the life of his girlfriend Ryoko. Takagi awakes with no memory of any sort: not of the accident, not of his family, not of his girlfriend. His parents, both doctors, take him home where he discovers a box full of old medical textbooks and, fascinated, he subsequently enrolls in medical school. Still, Takagi is a shell of a man
he shows no interest in any of his classmates, even the attractive young woman who slowly becomes obsessed with him, and lives alone in a squalid apartment. The first glimmer of life appears when Takagi begins his dissection class and he starts to explore the corpse of a young woman with a tattoo on her arm, a tattoo which slowly begins to dislodge fragments of Takagi's memories. He eventually comes to realize that the corpse he is dissecting is none other than Ryoko, his former girlfriend. As he continues to work more of his past returns and he grows increasingly protective of Ryoko's corpse. Eventually he begins having waking dreams of his lover. Are they memories? Fantasies? Or has he tapped into some sort of supernatural reality in which he can interact with Ryoko's spirit? Takagi becomes increasingly distant from reality as he pursues Ryoko beyond death...

Audio commentary from Midnight Eye's Tom Mes, author of books on Takashi Miike and Shinya Tsukamoto
Interview with director Shinya Tsukamoto
'Behind The Scenes' footage from the world premiere at the Venice Film Festival
Region 0