Deci­sion to Leave

Invok­ing the words of the Chi­nese philoso­pher Con­fu­cius, Seo-rae – the femme fatale at the heart of Park Chan-wook’s 11^th nar­ra­tive fea­ture, Deci­sion to Leave – issues a stark warn­ing to Hae-joon (Park Hae-il), the earnest detec­tive inves­ti­gat­ing her husband’s death dur­ing a hike: ​“Wise peo­ple admire the sea. Benev­o­lent peo­ple admire the moun­tains. I am not benev­o­lent.” Despite this cryp­tic cau­tion – or per­haps owing to it – the stead­fast, method­i­cal Hae-joon is beguiled by the beau­ti­ful and mys­te­ri­ous Chi­nese immi­grant Seo-rae (Tang Wei). But a ques­tion hangs over their dan­ger­ous liai­son, which Hae-joon is duty-bound to answer: did her hus­band fall or was he pushed?

Park cred­its a for­ma­tive view­ing of Alfred Hitch­cock​’s Ver­ti­go with spark­ing his ambi­tion to make films, and through­out his career he has dis­played a pen­chant for the sort of moral­ly com­plex, high-ten­sion nar­ra­tives that the Mas­ter of Sus­pense was sim­i­lar­ly drawn to. Like Hitch­cock, he’s also a suck­er for a swoon­ing love sto­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly one that puts its char­ac­ters through as much pain as it does plea­sure. Think of poor, trau­ma­tised cap­tive Oh Dae-su in Old­boy, or Izu­mi and Nam’s clan­des­tine love affair in The Hand­maid­en.

In Park’s films, love and suf­fer­ing are mere­ly dif­fer­ent sides of the same coin. Yet the influ­ence of Ver­ti­go upon his work has nev­er been as evi­dent as it is in Deci­sion to Leave, where a detective’s acro­pho­bia is trad­ed for insom­nia, as he pur­sues impos­si­ble cold cas­es in Busan and des­per­ate­ly longs for a good night’s sleep.

The death of immi­gra­tion offi­cial Ki Do-soo sets Hae-joon and Seo-rae on their col­li­sion course. Although his fall from a moun­tain appears to be either acci­den­tal or a sui­cide, his wife seems odd­ly unaf­fect­ed by his death. It quick­ly becomes appar­ent that her spouse was some­thing of a brute. By con­trast, his wife is an ele­gant, kind-heart­ed home helper for the elder­ly, whose clients adore her. Hae-joon is under­stand­ably bewitched by this trou­bled, fas­ci­nat­ing woman, and begins to tail her in an attempt to ascer­tain if she had any­thing to do with her husband’s demise. Seo-rae, flat­tered and amused by the stal­wart detective’s atten­tion, indulges in his game of cat and mouse.

While Hae-joon’s wife remains obliv­i­ous, liv­ing alone for most of the week in the sub­urbs, and his head­strong young part­ner Soo-wan urges him to wrap things up, he choos­es to linger, unable to place his fas­ci­na­tion with Seo-rae, or com­pre­hend the notion that she is capa­ble of mur­der – even when there is a stack of evi­dence to the contrary.

An insid­i­ous inter­play between inno­cence and guilt is baked into the core of Deci­sion to Leave, both in Seo-rae’s alleged actions and Hae-joon’s wan­der­ing heart. Seo-rae doesn’t just present an excit­ing new roman­tic prospect to him: for the first time in weeks, he is able to sleep peace­ful­ly due to her ther­a­peu­tic influ­ence. The dichoto­my between polar oppo­sites – like the sea and the moun­tains, beau­ti­ful­ly shot by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Kim Ji-young – is a recur­ring sym­bol­ic theme.

Take the rela­tion­ship between dreams and real­i­ty: both Hae-joon and Seo-rae fan­ta­sise about the poten­tial of their roman­tic attrac­tion, for a short time stay­ing togeth­er in Hae-joon’s Busan apart­ment where he cooks for Seo-rae while she smokes in his kitchen. But the truth is ulti­mate­ly inescapable, washed ashore with dev­as­tat­ing consequences.

A sig­na­ture of Park’s film­mak­ing is expert­ly realised and deeply shad­ed char­ac­ters, whose per­spec­tive and moti­va­tions remain com­pelling even from with­in the shades of grey moral­i­ty. The film’s script, writ­ten by Park and reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tor Jeong Seo-kyeong, is no excep­tion, with the char­ac­ters of Hae-joon and Seo-rae mak­ing for a clas­sic (and trag­ic!) noir pair­ing that Hitch­cock him­self would’ve been proud of.

While there’s an amus­ing irony in Park Hae-il – once the prime sus­pect in Bong Joon-ho’s Mem­o­ries of Mur­der – play­ing an exhaust­ed but ded­i­cat­ed detec­tive, the film is very much Tang Wei’s to com­mand. Seo-rae cuts a mag­net­ic fig­ure, clever and cal­cu­lat­ing but roman­tic and dreamy at the same time. Her attrac­tion to Hae-joon stems from his gen­tle­ness in con­trast to her sharp edges; he is the first man to treat her with kind­ness in quite some time. But the gulf between them doesn’t just stem from the lan­guage bar­ri­er – Seo-rae has good rea­son to hide parts of her­self from him, and per­haps the sweet gumshoe is attract­ed to the idea of this beau­ti­ful woman as opposed to the reality.

While Deci­sion to Leave might lack the grandiose scale of Park’s most-laud­ed work, its inti­ma­cy is no less appar­ent. This is a romance of missed con­nec­tions and par­al­lel lives; a point under­scored by the recur­ring use of Kore­an folk singer Jung Hoon Hee’s 1967 song ​‘Mist’, a Nan­cy Sina­tra-esque bal­lad about a woman recall­ing a lost love. This whim­sy con­trasts from the pre­ci­sion of every impos­ing moun­tain vista and the lux­u­ri­ous design of the apart­ments where our would-be lovers meet. Such ten­sions lie at the heart of this sto­ry: desire and duty; love and hatred; the moun­tains and the ocean. When torn between two oppos­ing forces, some­times the only pow­er one has is to walk away.

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

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