No one can be trust­ed in the first trail­er for Park Chan-wook’s Deci­sion to Leave

A detec­tive trav­els to a wind-swept moun­tain­side vil­lage sur­round­ed by sen­su­ous­ly wav­ing grass to inves­ti­gate a mur­der, and grad­u­al­ly falls for the dead guy’s femme fatale wid­ow. It sounds like the stuff of innu­mer­able films noir to have come before, but in the sui gener­is hands of the great Park Chan-wook, this premise is trans­formed into a bonan­za of cin­e­mat­ic embell­ish­ments and oth­er flights of fan­cy, unmis­tak­able as anyone’s but his.

You can see for your­self in the first trail­er for the upcom­ing dra­ma, released online this morn­ing. Sus­pense and lurch­ing dread com­min­gle with com­e­dy in a clip that con­veys the slip­pery mar­riage of tones that could only be pulled off by direc­tor Park, work­ing in a more earth­bound reg­is­ter with­out com­pro­mis­ing his styl­is­tic flair one iota.

In the film, the cop Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) finds him­self enrap­tured with the enig­mat­ic, flighty, beau­ti­ful Seo-rae (a trans­fix­ing Tang Wei), though she’s also the pri­ma­ry sus­pect in her husband’s death from a fall off of a rocky plateau. The trail­er shows the dynamism of Park’s visu­al lan­guage, which takes us inside cell phones and smart­watch­es to give unex­pect­ed per­spec­tives on a nar­ra­tive we think we know.

Our own Han­nah Strong was a boost­er for Park’s lat­est dur­ing its pre­mière at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, where it would net him a Best Direc­tor prize. In her review, she wrote: ​“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.”

Deci­sion to Leave also graces the cov­er of the lat­est issue of Lit­tle White Lies, which fea­tures inter­views with direc­tor Park, Tang Wei and Park Hae-il, as well as essays explor­ing the inte­ri­ors of Park’s cin­e­ma, his key influ­ence Ver­ti­go, and his coun­try­man Hong Sang-soo, along with the usu­al embar­rass­ment of review rich­es. It’s not to be missed, nor is the film, one of the most blaz­ing­ly orig­i­nal and rig­or­ous­ly accom­plished of the year.

Deci­sion to Leave comes to cin­e­mas in the US and Cana­da on 14 Octo­ber, and then the UK and Ire­land on 21 October.