Deci­sion to Leave – first-look review

A quote from Chi­nese philoso­pher Con­fu­cius looms over the cen­tral duo of Park Chan-wook’s Deci­sion to Leave: ​“The wise man admires water, the kind man admires moun­tains.” These are the words that Seo-rae (Tang Wei) recites to Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) while he inves­ti­gates the death of her hus­band, seem­ing­ly in a hik­ing acci­dent. Seo-rae knows her place is with the ocean. Hae-joon admires the water, but deep down, he belongs in the mountains. 

Seo-rae appears odd­ly unmoved by her husband’s pass­ing, which draws the sus­pi­cion of Hae-joon, who begins stak­ing out her apart­ment, look­ing for clues – Seo-rae is strange­ly charmed by the atten­tion after years of deal­ing with her abu­sive, con­trol­ling hus­band. The stage is set for a beguil­ing game of cat and mouse between the insom­ni­ac detec­tive and the woman in his crosshairs. 

The film has much in com­mon with Park’s recent work, name­ly Lit­tle Drum­mer Girl and Stok­er, in that it is a slow-burn study in ten­sion between char­ac­ters who are drawn to each oth­er despite know­ing from the out­set that they are play­ing a dan­ger­ous game. Hae-joon is mar­ried to a dot­ing wife, but Seo-rae is a tidal wave, crash­ing down on the unsteady shores of a life he has care­ful­ly con­struct­ed but increas­ing­ly finds crum­bling beneath his feet. He’s in des­per­ate need of a good night’s sleep, and strange­ly, the chief sus­pect in a mur­der case appears to be the only per­son who can pro­vide him with it. 

The chem­istry between Wei and Hae-il brings Jeong Seo-kyeong and Park’s lyri­cal script to life; through tense exchanges and voice notes their con­nec­tion ebbs and flows, a con­stant dance of reach­ing for each oth­er and pulling away. A dal­liance with Seo-rae goes against all of Hae-joon’s care­ful­ly con­trolled instincts, but he’s as pow­er­less to fight his attrac­tion to her as he is to stop the moon’s influ­ence over the tide. In the end, the only way to stop an ill-fat­ed dal­liance is through sep­a­ra­tion, but the pas­sage of time sees the almost-lovers drift back to one anoth­er, through des­tiny or design. 

A hand­ful of Park’s reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tors return for Deci­sion to Leave, notably pro­duc­tion design­er Ryu Seong-hie who cre­ates a stun­ning con­trast between the city and the rur­al and carves out dis­tinct spaces which encap­su­late the lone­ly, pre­cise lives of the cen­tral characters. 

This is com­ple­ment­ed by breath­tak­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy from Kim Ji-yong, col­lab­o­rat­ing with Park for the first time but instant­ly find­ing a gor­geous rhythm – from over-the-shoul­der cam­er­a­work dur­ing a foot chase between police and sus­pect to one par­tic­u­lar­ly eerie shot of ants crawl­ing over a corpse’s face. The com­po­si­tion of the film’s frames takes on a painter­ly qual­i­ty, and the jux­ta­po­si­tion between the still, unmov­ing moun­tains and the temp­ta­tion of the wild ocean is con­veyed in such a way it mir­rors Hae-joon and Seo-rae’s depositions. 

Deci­sion to Leave might not be as tit­il­lat­ing as the likes of The Hand­maid­en or Stok­er, but its themes of impos­si­ble romance and the inter­nal con­flict between desire and moral­i­ty make it a cap­ti­vat­ing addi­tion to Park’s fil­mog­ra­phy – a stun­ning sea-swept crime romance, about lone­ly peo­ple who know their attrac­tion to one anoth­er is ill-fat­ed at best.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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