Decision to Leave
Decision to Leave confirms what we all knew already – Park Chan-wook is really, really good at filmmaking
Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) is a hotshot detective, the youngest his department has ever seen. He works constantly, barely sleeping, seeing his wife only at the weekends. When he gets called out to investigate the death of a rock-climber, he meets a young woman named Seo-rae (Tang Wei) – the victim’s widow, the case’s chief suspect and the only person Hae-jun can think about from that moment on.
From here Decision to Leave plays out an elegant dance of cross-cuts, reflected surfaces and clever symmetry as these two strangers find themselves drawn together by a strange, rhythmic force that neither can explain or resist. As their mutual obsession grows and the evidence piles up, Hae-Jun finds himself more and more painfully torn between his head’s desire for the truth and his heart’s desire for Seo-rae.
The further we get drawn into the mystery, the less sure we are of whether we’re watching a love story or a criminal conspiracy. It’s a tale told in yearning glances and whispered half-truths, one where the words “I did it” and “I love you” always seem to be just out of reach.
Mostly, Decision to Leave confirms what we all knew already – Park Chan-wook is really, really good at this. Whether he’s using the camera to turn the climber’s corpse into a morbid sight gag, staging a scintillating rooftop knife fight or just basking in the sensual friction of his two leads eating sushi together, the film simply never misses a step.
Released 21 Oct by MUBI; certificate 15