Worth: $19.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Park Hae-il, Tang Wei, Go Kyung-pyo, Lee Jung-hyun
Intro:
… a morally complex film and an immersive dive into the psyches of its protagonists.
South Korean cinematic master Park Chan-wook returns to the big screen for the first time since his sumptuous The Handmaiden (2016), an adaptation of Sarah Waters’ The Fingersmith – and akin to The Handmaiden and Stoker (2013), Park delves into the waters of obsession and forbidden love. Essentially a neo-noir with nods to Hitchcock, Decision to Leave is more than the sum of its influences. It is no mere pastiche or even homage – it is a gripping crime thriller that although at times is overly complex with its plotting, delivers one of the most tragic romances to grace the silver screen in a genre film.
Respected detective Hae-joon (Park Hae-il, Memories of a Murderer) is an insomniac who specialises in stakeouts because he can’t sleep. He lives in Busan, although he has a wife (Lee Jung-hyun) in the coastal town of Ipo, who he tries to be satisfied with, but something is missing in their relationship. Hae-joon is a meticulous man who comes to life when given challenging cases, as his wife notes, he’s only really happy when he’s investigating a murder.
When a middle-aged immigration official winds up dead at the bottom of a mountain, Hae-joon and his partner Soo-wan (Go Kyung-pyo) begin an intense investigation that starts with Hae-joon insisting that they climb the mountain to gather evidence. Soo-wan is quite literally carried on Hae-joon’s back, which leads to some pithy comedy. What Hae-joon finds on top of the mountain is evidence of a man who inscribes his initials on everything he owns. This habit extends to his widow, the beguiling Chinese immigrant Seo-rae (Tang Wei, Lust Caution) who has suffered violent abuse at the hands of her husband.
The victim’s death could be accidental or a murder but Seo-rae’s lack of emotion over her husband’s demise, as well as a motive as an abuse victim, marks her out as a potential murderer. Seo-rae introduces herself as Chinese and remarks that her Korean is “insufficient.” During interrogation scenes with Hae-joon, a restrained but palpable connection forms between the two.
Hae-joon takes to staking out Seo-rae’s apartment. Like Scotty in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the more that he watches his target, the deeper he falls into her web. Seo-rae is not a traditional femme fatale – yes, she is beautiful and inscrutable, and she carries the weight of a terrible past, but she is hoping to be seen by the detective following her; in fact she is hoping to be seen in general. When Hae-joon asks why she would marry an older man who is morally reprehensible she answers, “He saw me.”
Park Chan-wook plays with the conventions of seeing. While Hae-joon is staking out Seo-rae, she is in turn following him. Soon the two become intimate (but not sexually) and their appearances in each other’s spaces become almost dream like. Cinematographer Kim Ji-yong lenses the encounters in an uncomfortably psychologically close manner. At one moment Hae-joon is in his car with his binoculars, at the other the camera inserts him into Seo-rae’s apartment. Not only does Park and Seo-kyeong Jeong’s script tell us that the detective has become too close to his target, the photography and editing reiterate Hae-joon’s compulsive drive.
Decision to Leave isn’t a whodunnit – Park gets that out of the way fairly quickly. The murder case that brought Seo-rae and Hae-joon together is eventually ruled a suicide. Hae-joon makes the decision to leave Busan after the case which has broken him professionally and personally and returns to his wife in Ipo.
When thirteen months later he encounters a newly married Seo-rae in Ipo, the chances of her appearance in the misty seaside town being coincidence are almost zero. Once again Seo-rae’s husband dies, this time in what is undeniably a murder, and once again Hae-joon is drawn into her world, but this time he decides he must not spare or sympathise with Seo-rae despite his longing for her never abating.
Decision to Leave is populated with the twists that a neo-noir should deliver although often their revelation is oddly timed. Park delivers on the front of a satisfying thriller but what makes the film tick is the romance at its centre. Park Hae-il and Tang Wei have an extraordinary chemistry. Both of the characters are sad and unfulfilled and their dangerous love for each other takes them to extremes. Tang Wei is mesmeric as Seo-rae, she’s reserved and indecipherable but when she allows herself to be a woman in love with a man she is filled with playful joy. Park Hae-il demonstrates a brokenness under his professionalism that goes so far that at one nail-biting moment the audience absolutely believes that he is ready to die for his obsession.
Decision to Leave is a morally complex film and an immersive dive into the psyches of its protagonists. Love does not conquer all in the film; either Seo-rae or Hae-joon will be forced to doom one another as they exist on opposing sides of the law. Which of them will make the decision to leave is a question that the film answers definitively in its beautifully rendered finale. Park Chan-wook has again taken the crime thriller and imbued it with the vicissitudes of the human heart and the result is captivatingly melancholy in its depiction of two souls who exist to nurture and destroy each other.
