Vital

I went into Vital expecting something disturbing, but it turned out to be surprisingly gentle and emotional. Director Shinya Tsukamoto tells the story of Hiroshi, a young man who loses his memory in a car crash that kills his girlfriend Ryoko. When he starts medical school and begins dissecting a cadaver, he realizes the body belongs to Ryoko. Through this strange process, his memories slowly come back.

What really caught me off guard was how calm and thoughtful this film is. Tsukamoto is known for intense, harsh movies, but here he creates something quiet and deeply sad. The idea of dissecting your dead girlfriend sounds like pure horror, but the film handles it with so much care. The dissection becomes more symbolic than disturbing. It’s about understanding life and love, not about death itself.

The movie mixes memory and reality in a beautiful way. Scenes jump between the cold dissection room and bright, colorful flashbacks of Ryoko dancing or the two of them together. These moments bring warmth back into Hiroshi’s empty world. Her dances especially stuck with me. They feel haunting but also full of life, reminding you of who she was before everything went wrong.

Even though death is at the center, *Vital* feels strangely peaceful. The visuals of rain, light, and movement make it more poetic than sad. Hiroshi barely talks, but you can feel his pain and his struggle to reconnect with both Ryoko and himself. His careful sketches of her body become his way of holding onto her memory.

This isn’t a movie for everyone. It moves slowly and doesn’t spell everything out for you. But if you give it time, it becomes a quiet meditation on grief and healing. Tsukamoto takes what could have been a horror story and turns it into something tender and almost comforting. It looks at death but finds the love that still remains underneath.