"Love Will Tear Us Apart" Review: Shinya Tsukamoto's "Vital"

Vital. 2004. Written, directed, edited, photographed and production designed by Shinya Tsukamoto. Produced by Shinya Tsukamoto, Keiko Kusakabe, Koichi Kusakabe, and Shinichi Kawahara. Music by Chu Ishikawa. Sound by Yoshiya Obara. Special makeup effects by Takashi Oda.

Cast: Tadanobu Asano (Hiroshi Takagi), Nami Tsukamoto (Ryoko Oyama), Kiki (Ikumi Yoshimoto), Kazuyoshi Kushida (Hiroshi's father), Lily (Hiroshi's mother), Go Riju (Dr. Nakai), Jun Kunimura (Ryoko's father), Ittoku Kishibe (Dr. Kashiwabuchi).


Shinya Tsukamoto’s beautiful film Vital (2004), one of the great highlights of Japan Society’s film series “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” continues his filmic exploration of the human body. Several of his other films (the cult classic Tetsuo the Iron Man and its two sequels, Tokyo Fist, Gemini, Bullet Ballet, A Snake of June [also screening in the series]) focus obsessively on the materiality of the body, and specifically on the various ways it can be smashed, violated, and exposed. However, in Vital, Tsukamoto goes deeper, literally, digging into the mysteries of human consciousness and what constitutes life.

Hiroshi (Tadanobu Asano), a medical student, wakes up from a coma, caused by a traffic accident in which his girlfriend Ryoko (Nami Tsukamoto) perished. Hiroshi, described by Tsukamoto as a “modern-day Leonardo da Vinci,” returns to his anatomy studies, making detailed drawings of his dissections.  Meanwhile, he struggles to piece together his memory, which was severely damaged by the accident. Asano, who is often quiet and nearly somnambulistic during much of this film, maintains a quietly brooding presence, which draws us into his character’s travels through his consciousness, gradually revealing more details of his life and his relationship with Ryoko before the accident. Through the crucial clue of a cadaver’s tattoo, Hiroshi comes to realize, in the film’s most perverse twist, that the body he is dissecting in his anatomy course is in fact that of his dead girlfriend. Ryoko, whom it seems nursed a desire for death, requested that her body be entrusted to the medical school for the students’ use.

Tsukamoto bathes his film in an icy blue palette and exhibits a striking sense of architecture and space, which is quite effective in exploring the contrasting spiritual realms his protagonist explores. During the time he is dissecting Ryoko’s corpse, he experiences frequent visitations from her, and in this way, he travels between the worlds of the living and the dead. When Ryoko was alive, they often flirted with this boundary through their kinky sex games of erotic asphyxiation. Hiroshi existed in the area between life and death during his coma, and ultimately he must choose whether he wants to be with Ryoko in her world, or remain in the world of the living.

Even though there is more than a hint of necrophilia in this scenario, Vital is remarkably free of exploitative elements and is quite restrained in its approach. There are many memorable and arresting images, such as superimposed cremation smokestacks, and the scenes of Ryoko’s visitations, especially one where she performs an anguished dance on a beach. One of the most moving passages in the film is the combined funeral and med-student graduation, where there is a deep respect expressed for the sacrifices the medical subjects and their families have made in the quest to expand human knowledge. “We owe them thanks,” the anatomy class professor intones before the students begin dissecting. And even though the essential question of the path Hiroshi ultimately chooses remains unresolved at the film’s conclusion, this is well in keeping with the deeper mystery the film poses of what constitutes human consciousness, a mystery which we are nowhere close to solving.

Vital screens at Japan Society on Saturday, March 3 at 7pm as part of its film series “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” an impressive selection of provocative films featuring twisted, obsessive, and extreme love stories from both Japan and Korea.  Several celebrated auteurs are represented here; besides Tsukamoto (whose latest film KOTOKO opens the series), the series offers films by Koji Wakamatsu (his latest film Petrel Hotel Blue and two earlier films from the 60s and 70s), Hong Sangsoo (Tale of Cinema), Kim Ki-duk (Bad Guy, Dream, Time), Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses), and Lee Chang-dong (Oasis).  Click here for more information on the series and to purchase tickets.

"Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film": Review Round-up

This film series currently screens at Japan Society through July 15. Below are some brief reviews.

Memories of Matsuko (Tetsuya Nakashima)

My personal favorite so far is this musical tragedy, an extravaganza of color and music graced by a spirited and moving performance by the stunning Miki Nakatani who commands the screen in nearly every scene. Based on a novel by Muneki Yamda, the film documents her passage from a respected schoolteacher, domestic goddess, prison inmate, prostitute, to an insane woman living in a decrepit, filthy apartment, who is eventually murdered. Matsuko’s life is seen through the eyes of her nephew Sho (Eita), a slacker wannabe musician who seems to do little more than watch porn tapes at home while his guitar gathers dust next to him. His father visits him, and informs him that this aunt he never knew was killed and asks him to clean out her apartment. As he does so, he begins to learn more about her life, and so do we. Nakashima’s film is a 21st century musical update of Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu, since in a similar way to the titular heroine played by Kinuyo Tanaka, Matsuko is consistently dragged down into degradation, despair, and finally madness. Her loyalty to the men in her life is rewarded with betrayal and abuse at their hands. But this is where the comparison ends. Nakashima’s approach couldn’t be more dissimilar to Mizoguchi’s; his film’s rousing and catchy musical sequences are the polar opposite of Mizoguchi’s somber tone and long takes.

Faces of a Fig Tree (Kaori Momoi)


Another visual stunner of this year’s festival is this exceedingly eccentric film from actress and first-time director Momoi. While it takes awhile for one to become accustomed to the film’s quirky rhythms, it becomes a remarkable experience. Extremely stylized and shot in odd, cantilevered angles, Kaori’s visual strategies heighten the strangeness of her tale. Momoi is aided considerably by art director Takeo Kimura, largely responsible for the stunning cinema landscapes of Seijun Suzuki.

The film focuses in on the Kadowaki clan: construction worker Oto (Saburo Ishikura); his wife Maasa (Momoi) a scatterbrained woman whose domestic drives are taken to a highly neurotic extent; writer daughter Yume (Hanako Yamada), who is seen in some scenes in her younger days with her father; and son Oto Jr. (Hiroyuki), who registers little in this story. The father works nights on a construction site to fix potentially deadly flaws on their latest construction project in order to save his boss from a lawsuit. He eventually rents an apartment near the site so he can finish the project more quickly. Maasa is convinced he is having an affair, despite Oto’s protestations otherwise.

Momoi creates a bizarre universe where anything can and does happen. One particularly startling instance occurs early in the film when Yume drops a peanut out a window, where it nearly hits a group of CGI ants who argue over the use of the F-word. Momoi’s own performance, while it often overwhelms the other actors, is still quite something to watch, as she registers each peculiar reaction to events and mirrors the eccentricity of her own scenario.

Sway (Miwa Nishikawa)

This former assistant to Hirokazu Kore-eda (Maborosi, After Life, Who Knows) is beautifully attuned in her own films to the conflicts and struggles of family life, subjecting this subject matter to compelling forensic analysis. Her writing is consistently sharp and her characterizations always feel natural and authentic. Her previous film Wild Berries featured a dysfunctional clan thrown into turmoil by the reappearance of an estranged prodigal son. Sway’s tragic events are set into motion by another prodigal character, Takeru (Joe Odagiri), a successful photographer in Tokyo who returns to his family home after the death of his mother. He is the self-described “black sheep” of the family who ran away from their small town and the family gas-station business to pursue his own dreams. What soon emerges is the central conflict between Takeru and his older brother Minoru (Teruyuki Kagawa), the one who stayed behind and worked in the family business. His resentment doesn’t show itself until later in the film. Takeru comes across an old girlfriend Chieko (Yoko Maki) he had left behind. This sets into motion the tragic events that drive the bulk of the film. Minoru gets the idea to return to Hasumi Gorge, where they often went with their parents as children. The night before going there, Takeru and Chieko had slept together, and they both suspect Minoru knows about it. At the gorge, Chieko reveals to Takeru her fear that she will be stuck in her small town, and regrets not leaving with him for Tokyo years before. Takeru crosses an old bridge that sways easily (hence the film’s title), and Chieko does the same. Minoru goes after her, and Chieko ends up falling off the bridge. Minoru is arrested for her murder, and the film keeps us guessing until the end about exactly what happened.

The resulting trial brings the conflict between the brothers and other family members to the surface. Memory plays a large role, represented by Takeru’s conflicted memories of the incident and his own childhood, and home movies made by his mother. Nishikawa is remarkably attuned to family relationships and the ways people can hurt each other intentionally or unintentionally, due to the unbreakable ties of family. Sway is a low-key yet profound family drama that is one of the best films of the festival.

Nightmare Detective (Shinya Tsukamoto)

This represents yet another entry in Tsukamoto's technically impressive films, beginning from Tetsuo: The Iron Man to Haze, which use the horror/thriller mode to illuminate the Tokyo cityscape and what lies beneath the surface. This latest film contains many familiar elements. Kagenuma (Ryuhei Matsuda), a man able to enter the dreams of others, is drafted by Keiko Kirishima (hitomi), a new detective to solve a number of suicides that may actually be murders. Tsukamoto himself appears as “0,” a suicidal man who controls these murder/suicides by cell phone. The premise is familiar from such films as Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure and many other similar films. Tsukamoto excels in visuals and sound design, and provides the requisite shocks. However, this genre to me seems to be approaching exhaustion and a mannerist phase, and as much as one admires Tsukamoto’s prodigious technical gifts, it seems a bit wasted in the service of something we’ve seen many times before.

Dear Pyongyang (Yonghi Yang)

One of two feature documentaries screening at the festival, this is a revealing and affecting portrait of Yang's father, a lifelong staunch pro-North Korean. Yang’s film illuminates the experiences of the zainichi, ethnic Koreans living and born in Japan. One of the largest zainichi communities exists in Yang’s hometown of Tsuruhashi, Ikuno-ku, Osaka, where a quarter of the population are Koreans. Besides facing discrimination from the larger Japanese society, they were divided amongst themselves, between supporters of North Korea and South Korea. Yang’s father was a founding member of the Chongryun organization, an activist group who fought for zainichi civil rights and who were fierce supporters of North Korea’s “Great Leader” Kim Il-sung. To this end, he participated in the “Great Return” program, a repatriation movement that started in the 1950’s to “return” Koreans in Japan to North Korea, which at that time had a robust economy, supported by the Soviet Union. Ironically, many of these “returnees” were going to North Korea for the first time, including Yang’s three brothers, who left when she was six years old, and who she was only able to see on very brief visits to Pyongyang. Dear Pyongyang, with great affection and humor, as well as considerable poignancy, documents Yang’s efforts to understand her father’s reasons for separating his family because of his unyielding political convictions. Yang builds up many telling details of her family life: the growing care packages her mother sends to her sons’ families in Pyongyang, as their lives become ever harsher over the years; her father’s reluctance to talk about himself; her parents’ refusal to ever speak ill of the “Great Leader”; Yang’s own video footage of her visits to Pyongyang. “Unveiled reality is painful,” Yang remarks upon a shot of a massive abandoned construction project looming just behind Kim Il-sung’s statue. The courageous mission of Yang’s film is to do just that: reveal the truths that are painful to face, both familial and political.