tsukamoto's masterpiece i almost cried after watching this film for the first time. not because of the story so much as just the beauty of the film. its just so amazing to see how far tsukamoto has come, from the brilliant independence that was tetsuo to this, the film is just nothing short of magnificent.
the story itself is certainly much deeper than most other films from the director. it also seems a lot more personal as well, maybe it only struck a personal chord with myself. the story was very dark&surreal. each scene was directed beautifully, from start to finish, my eyes were constantly amazed by almost every frame shot.
i also enjoyed the excessive rain, an inspiring trademark i have noticed in tsukamoto as well as takashi miike. he really knows how to use it to affect your mood.
another aspect enjoyed very much was the music, very droned yet beautiful ambience reminiscent of stars of the lid&brian eno.
overall a masterpiece from tsukamoto&another wonderful addition to the world of surreal arthouse cinema. deserves far more above a 3/5 score.
Is this supposed to be ROMANTIC? This was showing for free on cable so I fast forwarded. Ouch. There are moldy green tiled walls like in SAW which I also fast forwarded to no detriment. It was interesting that the female lead was anorexic. I can tell from her stringy arms that that is not naturally slim that I am looking at. Her face was cute. I fast forwarded the whole thing but I couldn't keep my eye on the screen. The movie looked aesthetically wrong to me so I couldn't watch it. It looked like clips from autopsy class, parental scolding, and fantasy nothing scenes with the anorexic girl. Is this supposed to be romantic in a twisted way? I figured out from fast forwarding that he was dissecting the girl of his dreams. This movie was "effort without result."
If you want to see what grey eyes on an Asian looks like as reported in Arthur Goldman's Memoirs of a Geisha, then catch the lead actor in the much better Japanese movie, Taboo.::mumble mumble:: huh? wha? sucks? ::confused look:: I saw this at the Toronto film festival over a year ago, and most of the audience was fighting to stay awake, even those who later published glowing reviews about it. Vital is terrible. I propped my eyelids open, because I really wanted it to be great, and was waiting in vain for Vital to redeem itself. I have seen every Tsukamoto film, and I love and own a copy of each of his works, except this one-- intentionally. I find his work amazing despite the arc of decline in quality, which defines his directing career. Vital is his current worst. Despite how boring it is (two hours of a confused, nearly mute Tadanobu Asano and scalpel scraping), some of the cinematography is beautiful. Be warned that this very similar to another terrible psycho-memory drama by David Cronenberg called "Spider." Vital could be considered the Japanese version of Spider, or Spider the Canadian-Irish version of Vital: Pretty pictures, a wisp of a story that is continually misremembered or confused, and main characters mumbling incoherently for two hours in primary colored rooms.
