Decision to Leave: Park Chan-wook's Tale of Murder and Obsession Evokes a Coolly Noir Mood
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B+
With their creative licence and freedom to test boundaries of sex and violence, South Korean films of this century have often left we with a feeling of seeing Hollywood’s past – usually the ‘70s - played out in an Asian context.
But in his latest, the coolly rendered obsession tale Decision to Leave, director Park Chan-wook evokes the mood of the best of noir era, Hollywood’s apex in Park’s opinion. He won the Best Director prize at the Cannes film festival for the film.
An ethically compromised detective (Park Hae-il) examines the contents of suspect Wei Tang’s phone
The story of a police detective who stakes out a mystery woman who may or may not have murdered her husband, is a departure from the Vengeance trilogy that made Park’s name. He is content for the most part here to convey the aftermath of violence, bodies discovered, forensic evidence, and occasionally the looming threat of violence itself.
This is a wise choice. Shocking episodes of explicit brutality might have broken the spell of this obsessive relationship between investigator and suspect.
Det. Hae-Joon (Park Hae-il) is a mess even before he sets eyes on the enigmatic widow Seo-rae (Wei Tang). He has insomnia and is in a long-distance marriage to a nuclear technician named Jeong-Ahn.
There’s an apparent understanding that he will join her eventually in the town of Ipo where she works. Jeong-ahn is an outwardly chipper type-A who does everything for a reason, including have dutiful scheduled sex because it promotes good health. This is played for dry humour in a film that has its share of tension-breaking quips, most of them delivered by Hae-Joon’s younger partners.
The passionless nature of their relationship suggests Hae-Joon may be vulnerable to the manipulation of a femme fatale like Seo-rae.
The (maybe) crime: Seo-rae’s older, and ostensibly violence-prone husband goes rock climbing and falls to his death. What might have been written off as an accident raises the eyebrows of Hae-Joon and his partner Soon-wan (GO Kyoung-pyo) after they interview the widow and note her unemotional and cryptic responses (she is Chinese and frequently apologizes for her faulty Korean).
Having no good reason to be home is one reason Hae-Joon can devote so many sleepless nights to sitting in a car outside Seo-rae’s house. The stage is set for the watcher and the suspect to bond.
The procedural parts of Decision to Leave are well-handled, with extracted DNA and phone records taking Hae-Joon to an obvious place. But his conflicted feelings paralyze him, and he leaves the case behind, taking a transfer to Ipo to be with his wife. If this were a three-act movie, that might be the end of it. But it’s not.
With so many night scenes, Decision to Leave is almost literally noir. But Tang gives it a vintage femme fatale vibe, smoothly playing a poker-faced “Who, me?” suspect who holds all the emotional cards. She is the only one who knows the truth, and the one who decides how much of it to reveal. When she professes to love Hae-Joon, it is difficult to know whether it is sincere or performative.
Nonetheless, there is something between them, and Park captures the subtle pain and growing obsession of his characters with masterful focus. If Decision to Leave is indeed intended as an homage to a genre, mission accomplished.
CLICK HERE to read Jim Slotek’s interview with director Park Chan-wook.
Decision to Leave. Directed by Park Chan-wook. Written by Park Chan-wook and Jeong Seo-kyeong. Starring Park Hae-il, Wei Tang and GO Kyoung-pyo. Opens Friday, October 28 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Opens Thursday, November 3 in Vancouver and November 4 across Canada.