Nobody messes around like Park Chan-wook. Far past the point where Theseus himself would have given up and turned into a pile of desiccated bones in some dead-end corner, the Korean master behind "Oldboy" and "The Handmaiden" will be leisurely wandering through another one of his labyrinths. immaculately intricate. pausing very occasionally, perhaps with the slightest trace of irritation, to make sure the stragglers in the back can keep up. The process should be maddening, but instead, as his new Cannes competition title demonstrates, it's almost magical how his trail of sleek, glittering clues leads us, blinking, into the light again. After the worldwide success of Bong Joon-ho's “Parasite” and the small-screen domination of “Squid Game,” your sublime new Korean thriller obsession is here, and it's Park Chan-wook's “Decision to Leave.” .
Hae-joon (Park Hae-il, who seamlessly melds the classic noir archetypes of lovesick scapegoat and stubborn chump) is a police detective. The youngest officer to become an inspector in bustling Busan, he is handsome, respected, and happily married to a beautiful and witty wife (Lee Jung-hyun). However, they do not live together, as she works in the smaller seaside town of Ipo, a few hours' drive away, and Hae-joon, who is in the homicide squad, needs the vice of the big city to prosper. Although even here, things are slow: in the first conversation with his younger, lanky and inexperienced partner he sees Hae-joon complain that there are not enough murders in those who work.
Director: Park Chan-wook
Writers: Park Chan-wook, Seo-kyeong Jeong
Stars: Tang Wei, Park Hae-il, Go Kyung-Pyo
So when a man's body is found at the base of a nearby mountain, Hae-joon is given the case. This is how he meets the man's beautiful and enigmatic wife, Seo-rae, a Chinese-speaking caregiver for the elderly whose seeming lack of concern for new widowhood piques Hae-joon's curiosity. He gets to know her and continues to watch her apartment at night even after her alibi has convinced him of her innocence, in part because it's the only time the insomniac detective can get a good night's sleep. Curiosity erupts into a strangely respectful kind of obsession, in which every boundary of familiarity crossed is tacitly forgiven and reciprocated.
“Decision to Leave” is essentially a love story, and it's deeply sexy, though there isn't a single sex scene, and Hae-joon and Seo-rae barely touch, other than rummaging through each other's pockets or applying a sweet-smelling lotion on his calloused hands. Instead, their soulmate-esque bond (complicated, naturally, when Seo-rae's alibi turns out not to be as solid as it first seemed) is evoked by the two actors' innately believable natural chemistry and the impressive choreography of certain scenes. , in which their gestures and movements are synchronized as if their bodies had always known each other.
This harmony continues throughout, through a change of location and a change of hairstyle and husband for Seo-rae. But it's been around since their first real conversation, in a police interrogation room, when, after a delivered lunch of expensive high-end sushi, they wordlessly clear the table with the practiced efficiency of a long-married couple. who has done it a thousand times. times.
It is not the only time that the staging of a scene is more charged with meaning than the words spoken. Kim Ji-yong's superb camerawork seems to find new levels of expressiveness without somehow becoming ostentatious: a conversation in a stairwell remains visually interesting through the use of perhaps the only two new coverage angles in that hackneyed place they exist. There are glorious overloads and cutting symmetries and an almost insultingly cool use of reflections. TV screens and windows layer the characters on top of each other even though they're in separate spaces, creating a strange, gently surreal flourish as Hae-joon, who will be watching Seo-rae from afar, appears behind her. of her in the room.
And there are montages, accompanied by a woodwind score lush with romance and intrigue, that deliver a rave of imagery that would be the central climax of any other film, but here it's just an elegant aside. Even as he grapples with the age-old conundrum of telling a backstory while keeping the audience engaged, Park is inventive. An expository monologue comes in layers about an otherwise unrelated rooftop chase, but would be thoroughly exciting.
Watch Decision to Leave 2022 Movie Trailer
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