If Park Chan-wook’s success in the early 2000s is defined by the brutality of hit films like Lady Vengeance and Oldboy, his latest decade is more defined by his sensuality. The violence never left, but in films like Stoker and especially in his 2016 masterpiece The Handmaiden, the South Korean director found a brilliant fusion with romance and eroticism. Cruel ironies are eschewed for poignant humanity. Decision to Leave is his latest film. In both violence and sexuality, it’s his least explicit film in many years, but it might be his most obsessive. A brooding murder mystery crossed with an intense love story – tinged with some pulpy noir – Park hasn’t lost his edge, but as he’s gotten older, the bloodlust has been replaced with an ardent passion, the throbbing heart replacing the bloody knife.
The film stars Tang Wei, the Chinese actress best known for her debut performance in Ang Lee’s controversial film, Lust, Caution in 2007. She stood out in that film, matching wits with Tony Leung and coming out ahead, which is not an easy task. Owing to bans in her home country, due to that film’s explicit nature, Tang’s career since has been a series of stops and starts, with occasional highlights like Michael Mann’s Blackhat and Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Decision to Leave feels like the first major lead role she’s gotten in a breakthrough international film since 2007, and Park uses her star persona and reputation expertly in the role of Seo-rae, a widow who’s beauty and grace distracts from a more sinister reality.
Seo-rae’s husband died falling off a cliff in Busan, hitting several rocks on the way down before crushing his skull on the ground. An avid hiker, it was perhaps his fate to die this way, at least that’s how Seo-rae feels when she learns about it. This reaction feels odd to Hae-jun (a terrific Park Hae-il), the chief inspector called on the case when the body is found. Little detective work is done before Hae-jun learns that Seo-rae, a Chinese woman with limited Korean, was abused by her husband, even tattooed with his initials on her hip. Hae-jun’s partner (Go Kyung-pyo) thinks there is something very suspicious about her, but Seo-rae’s alibi is airtight. A caretaker for elderly women, she was spotted coming in and out of the home of one of her patients at the time of death. So why does Hae-jun find himself staking out her apartment, watching her every move through binoculars?
Hae-jun’s wife, Jung-an (Lee Jung-hyun), lives in the much quieter town of Ipo, oblivious to her husband’s newfound infatuation. At home, Jung-an fusses over Hae-jun’s every move and listlessly blurts out health and marriage statistics as if their relationship is always in peril – she insists on having sex at least once a week, even if they’re upset with one another. Hae-jun is also plagued with insomnia , and he uses this as an excuse to keep visiting Seo-rae’s apartment at night. It’s not long before Seo-rae notices the detective sleeping in his car outside her door. Once discovered, Hae-jun drops the appearances of a stakeout and starts visiting her inside her apartment, continuing to ask her questions about her husband’s death as a ruse to continue to get closer to her. Not even believing her to be the killer, the case bonds them together, and keeping it going becomes a prerogative if he wants to continue to see her.
Hae-jun’s dual pursuit of criminal justice and romantic conquest may remind many of James Stewart’s Scottie in Vertigo, obsessively following the beautiful Kim Novak, and unknowingly leading himself into a depraved murder plot. Decision to Leave‘s allusions to Hitchcock aren’t obscured, with Park specifically homaging the suspense master in several sequences. Like Vertigo, the film’s plot intentionally tangles itself, giving the audience a third act that’s impossible to parse until we get to the final shot. The brilliance of Vertigo lies in the perfection of its ending, one of cinema’s all-time bummers that’s both totally unexpected but also the only logical conclusion the movie could have. If Decision to Leave fails in any way, it’s in trying to recreate that. The last 45 minutes lag on and on, until we get to a finish that feels boxed in by its own dedication to reverence.
The ending, as laborious as it may be, doesn’t distract from the beautiful filmmaking throughout. Park, already proven to be a master of form, gives Decision to Leave a lush visual language (cinematography by Kim Ji-yong), beautifully contrasting motion and stillness to create a whirling journey through Hae-jun’s ruminating mind. What begins as displaying his capacity as a homicide inspector then turns into his inability to get Seo-rae out of his head. The same process that has built his sterling reputation at work becomes his devastating undoing in life. There is not nearly as much action in Decision to Leave as previous Park films, but the sequences are exquisitely shot, with his notoriously direct visual style, the camera’s frank voyeurism giving the violence a striking bluntness that rattles your bones.
In the leads, Tang Wei and Park Hae-il are perfection, playing out noir tropes (femme fatale, gullible detective) without detracting from the central romance. As the script (by Park Chan-wook and Jeong Seo-kyeong) gets overwhelmed with complication, Tang and Park are consistently great, selling the unbreakability of their bond even when the movie itself struggles. I’d be curious to see the version of this film that is less beholden to Hitchcock, where Park Chan-wook allows himself to be more un-leashed. In adding such a long coda after the more conventional ending, Park tests his audience’s patience and I’m not totally sold it pays off. It makes sense that a film about ungoverned longing would get long-winded about itself, but in homaging Hitchcock, it’s important to remember his exquisite talent with narrative craft. Decision to Leave is a visual marvel with electric performances, but I may have preferred the story told in Park Chan-wook’s more rough-and-tumble style.
Directed by Park Chan-wook