Vital

Japanese body horror auteur Shinya Tsukamoto, still best known in the U.S. for Tetsuo, teams with hipster icon Tadanobu Asano for the psychological drama Vital. Asano plays Hiroshi Takagi, who wakes from a coma, his memory seriously impaired, and decides, to the relief of his parents (Kazuyoshi ...more

Cult filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto abandons, at least temporarily, his monochromatic palette and his preoccupation with bizarre meldings of man and machine for the somber, ruminative drama, Vital, which could be described, reductively, as a love story between an amnesiac and a corpse. We're inside the head of Hiroshi (Tadanobu Asano) for much of the film, and early on, he spends a good deal of time silently observing, staring into the mirror, and trying to get a grip on who he is and what's ...more