Vital

20042004
RR
1h 26min

After a tragic car accident where his girlfriend Ryôko Ooyama (Nami Tsukamoto) died, Hiroshi Takagi (Tadanobu Asano) suffers amnesia with his memories completely blanked. When he sees a book... Read allAfter a tragic car accident where his girlfriend Ryôko Ooyama (Nami Tsukamoto) died, Hiroshi Takagi (Tadanobu Asano) suffers amnesia with his memories completely blanked. When he sees a book about dissection, he decides to join the medical school with the support of his parents. ... Read allAfter a tragic car accident where his girlfriend Ryôko Ooyama (Nami Tsukamoto) died, Hiroshi Takagi (Tadanobu Asano) suffers amnesia with his memories completely blanked. When he sees a book about dissection, he decides to join the medical school with the support of his parents. In the dissection class, his group participates of the autopsy of a young woman, and while... Read all

6.8/10

Top credits

See production, box office & company info

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Awards
- 5 wins & 3 nominations

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6.9

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6.4

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Tokage

After a tragic car accident where his girlfriend Ryôko Ooyama (Nami Tsukamoto) died, Hiroshi Takagi (Tadanobu Asano) suffers amnesia with his memories completely blanked. When he sees a book about dissection, he decides to join the medical school with the support of his parents. In the dissection class, his group participates of the autopsy of a young woman, and while cutting apart the tissue, he partially recalls his accident. Later, when he sees a tattoo in the arm of the corpse, he discloses that she was his girlfriend and becomes obsessed to go further in the examination of the body. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

loneliness dissection tattoo parents autopsy 15 more

Genres
- Drama
- Thriller
Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)
- Rated R for some aberrant sexual behavior, disturbing images and brief language
Parents guide
- Add content advisory

Soundtracks
Blue Bird
Written by Cocco
Performed by Cocco

Top review

8/10

Brief review

After the surrealness of the Tetsuo films and the blue filters and voyeurism of Snake of June, I was not sure where Tsukamoto would go with this film. I saw it as part of the London FIlm Festival and it was one of my favourite films.

The story is of a Hiroshi (Asano Tadanobu) suffering from amnesia (as a result of a car crash in which his girlfriend dies) slowly regaining his memory through performing an autopsy on her. It raises questions on the nature of the self and how mutable it is.

For example, Hiroshi was pressured in to becoming a medical student, but he rebelled and became a drifter. After the crash he loses his recent memory, but he is inexplicably drawn to study medicine. Is this the call of his nature or a way of healing? Once the trauma's of teenage years are stripped away and we return to the core of the self before social conditioning steps in, are we more innocent or closer to what we can become? All this may sound very deep, but this film is all about childhood/innocence and the self in my opinion.

Pretty different from the other three films mentioned above, but still has lots of blue/grey filters and an extremely acute sense of sound. Some of the autopsy scenes have some wonderful slurping noises and tension that really set me on edge.

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