Decision to Leave (2022) Review

“Decision to Leave” Theatrical Poster

Director: Park Chan-wook
Cast: Park Hae-il, Tang Wei, Lee Jung-hyun, Park Yong-Woo, Ko Kyoung-Pyo, Kim Shin-Young, Yoo Seung-Mok, Park Jung-Min, Seo Hyun-Woo, Lee Hak-Joo
Running Time: 138 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Take a look at the filmography of director Park Chan-wook and it’s almost impossible to pin him down to any one genre. Whether he’s dealing with a murder mystery in the JSA, the quest for vengeance after being held captive for 15 years, or the desires of being a vampire, at the core of his tales is always the human condition and its many follies. That core remains the same for his latest work, Decision to Leave, which takes the form of a noir styled detective story surrounding the apparent suicide of a businessman who fell from the top of a mountain.

It’s been 7 years since we’ve seen a Chan-wook movie on the big screen with 2015’s The Handmaiden, but it’s not that he hasn’t been busy during that time. In 2018 he directed the 6-part spy drama The Little Drummer Girl for the BBC, the 2^nd time for him to produce an English language feature after 2013’s Stoker, and in the same year as Decision to Leave he directed the short film Life is But a Dream as part of Apple’s promotion for the iPhone 13 Pro. However despite these welcome excursions into other formats, it’s arguably on the big screen that Chan-wook’s work is best viewed, so it’s always a cause for excitement when he returns to feature length filmmaking.

In Decision to Leave we meet a detective suffering from insomnia played by Park Hae-il (War of the Arrows, A Muse). We learn he was the youngest officer to be promoted to inspector in Busan where he’s based, however his wife lives in the small seaside town of Ipo which requires him to make the long trip every weekend, staying on the phone to his colleague so he doesn’t fall asleep at the wheel. Hae-il’s insomnia sees him going through the motions each day for the most part, until the case regarding the businessman who fell off the mountain comes across his desk. The deceased’s wife is brought in for questioning, a Chinese national working in aged care played by Tang Wei (Wu Xia, Lust, Caution), and although her innocence seems apparent, Hae-il starts staking her out anyway. 

The why becomes increasingly blurred as Decision to Leave progresses – does he believe that she could be hiding something? Or is he crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed? We get answers to both of these questions, but the reasoning behind the answers only makes matters more troubling. One thing that becomes apparent while watching Decision to Leave is that Chan-wook is very much at the top of his game here. The narrative is stripped of the shocking bursts of violence or erotic nudity of his previous work, but it’s no less engaging, creating a world which sizzles with an underlying sexual chemistry threatening to boil over, while using self-doubt and elements of mistrust to pull back at the last minute.

Tang Wei clocks in what could be a career best performance (she notably won best actress at several Korean Film Awards, the first foreign actress to do so), conveying an ethereal beauty similar to her character in 2018’s A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, never giving away what’s truly behind her thoughts until the final scene. It’s a joy to see a talent like Wei in a Korean production, although it’s not her first. The actress has lived in Korea for several years after marrying director Kim Tae-yong, who she worked with on 2010’s Late Autumn, however it’s the first time since then for her to appear in a local production. The use of language plays a significant part in developing her character, with her use of formal Korean, and quiet giggles when she struggles to convey what she wants to say making for an endearing presence, a stark contrast to when she confidently speaks in her native tongue.

Chan-wook uses the frame ingeniously, striking a perfect partnership with director of photography Kim Ji-yong, fully leveraging the visual language of cinema in a way few other directors can. Perspectives constantly change, such as having Hae-il appear in the same room as Wei while he’s staking her out from the comfort of his car, pointing out her bad habits and urging her not to smoke after a meal. Other times the camera is placed overhead as flashlights scour the ground under a canopy of trees at night, and we even get one point of view from the eye of a dead fish. The different angles and narrators come together to give Decision to Leave a slightly off kilter tone, in which it never truly feels like we’re seeing things as they are.

In fact much of what we see in Decision to Leave feels like we’re not seeing the full picture. The morning mist in Ipo gives everything an otherworldly haze, while Hae-il’s stakeout means we often see Wei obscured by bars or behind objects, combined with his regular use of eye drops to sharpen his focus (as well as our own). Many of the scenes play out in the dark or the setting sun, giving an almost Twilight Zone feel to much of the aesthetic, laced through with Hitchcockian overtones that makes everything feel not fully grounded in reality. Hae-il’s seemingly growing infatuation with Wei feels like it begins to muddy the line between what’s real and what could be his daydreaming due to a lack of sleep, no more so than when he launches into a bizarre outburst about what it means to love someone, made to a criminal he finally corners after a thrilling rooftop chase. 

Such scenes also show off Chan-wook’s distinct flair for black humor. It’s fair to say that Decision to Leave features the most distinct use of the director’s sense of humor since the likes of Thirst and the Vengeance Trilogy, subtly incorporating in a number of laugh out loud moments into even the most serious of scenes. In one scene Wei begins feverishly ripping down the photos Hae-il has taken of her during his stakeouts, only for them to decide on keeping a few in which they both agree she looks pretty. The scene is played completely poker faced which only makes it funnier, a testament to the fact that if Chan-wook ever did decide to do a full-blown comedy, it’d be a welcome one (as it is, the closest we probably have is 2006’s I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK).

Special mention should go to Lee Jung-hyun (Night of the Undead, Peninsula) who plays Hae-il’s wife. After appearing in the 2011 short film Night Fishing which Chan-wook directed along with his brother, and having Chan-wook direct the music video for her 2013 track V, here she finally gets to work with him on a feature length production. The scenes Hae-il and Jung-hyun share in Ipo are defined by the early morning mist that shrouds the village each day, in many ways recalling Kim Soo-yong’s 1967 classic Mist, of which it feels Chan-wook makes several nods to. In that movie the scenario is reversed – a married salary man from Seoul returns to his misty seaside hometown and almost strikes up an affair with a local woman – and Mist also makes reference to how lonely people see ants, a motif that Chan-wook uses both here and in his 2003 classic Old Boy.

As a mystery movie there may be some who’ll complain the truth behind the businessman’s death is predictable, and that the hardboiled detective falling for the recently widowed femme fatale is as older plot device as time itself, but then, that seems to be Chan-wook’s point. It’s not so much about the tale being told as it is about the characters who inhibit it, and every time the narrative shows some semblance of cohesiveness, in the next scene it gets yanked away, once more leaving us with a sense of unease as to where the final destination is that we’re headed towards. Like an old-fashioned noir romance flick told through the lens of one of the most creative filmmakers working today, Decision to Leave continues to linger long in the memory after the credits roll, just like the morning mist in Ipo.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 9/10