Decision to Leave (2022) : A fun and unique thriller about desire.

Decision to leave (2022) is one of the most fun films I had watched in recent times. Park-Chan-wook’s Film has that old age story of how a Detective falls for the suspect who is wanted for murder. But the treatment of the film makes it have a unique flavour and some of the most fun filmmaking to watch on screen.

It is an “erotic Thriller”. It tells the story of a mountain climber who falls off from a steep mountain during one of his adventurous hiking’s. At first it looks like a simple accident but as they dig deeper into the life of the wife, they become suspicious. This leads the detective to have feelings for her spiralling into this fun filled ride.

First and foremost, I would like to say that the cinematography has this eccentric feel to it. There is something obscure and oblique in certain frames. The design and staging of its acute and distinctive angles in some frames or when the camera is placed in a certain place and the action is taking place off-screen, all these methods add to the flavour of the film. This deep method allows for the characters to remain in a suspension of disbelief. It is deliberate to manipulate the audience to thinking of what we want to see and what is happening. This allows us to engage with the characters. There is also an aesthetic quality in the film that punches its weight too. Its unique colour tone and the way it uses colourful backgrounds to give a certain stillness to the film when the frame is on hold. It’s distinctive to Park-Chan-Wook’s other films.

The lead detective Jang Hae-Jun (played by Hae il Park) has insomnia. This difficulty in sleeping leads him to view the world with perpetual angst. His marriage with his wife is also strained (he has something called a “weekend marriage”) leaving him to contemplate only about his work and how many unsolved cases he has which led him to this insomnia.

Because of this he gets an obsession over Song Seo-Rae (played by Tang Wei). She is enigmatic. There is something mysterious and deep surrounding her. But its not only the mystery, there is also a certain beauty to her. She is of Chinese descent who speaks a peculiar Korean. This gives a nice dynamic between the two lead characters. He even observes and watches her in a voyeuristic manner from her daily routine of petting cats to eating ice cream for dinner. These scenes bring a sensuality to the screen even without much explicitness.

There is one certain scene in the beginning which shows the whole essence of the film. It acts as an interrogation scene between the two. But it is more of them getting to know each other and acts as a sort of date situation. He even buys her sushi from a luxurious place for dinner. This plays out wonderfully when both finish their dinner and clean up the table, they work in perfect co-ordination with each other (The editing in this part is excellent) as if both are perfect for each other and it creates this wonderful metaphor for these characters. The performances should not be left out too. Both Hae il Park and Tang Wei have great chemistry and both of their eye’s do the talking throughout the film. Especially Tang Wei, she has a certain quality with her eye’s that leaves the audience with an enigma.

But Decision to Leave has much more subtlety when compared to Park’s previous works like OldBoy (2003) and The Handmaiden (2016). Those films were explicit in its nudity and violence and grotesqueness. Here everything felt dumbed down (not like that’s a bad thing, the frames still popped out with its vibrant colours). This could have been deliberate in the approach as the imagery of explicitness could have been avoided to allow us to remember what’s more important in the film.

The film can be put in a noir category but at the crux of it I think Park is telling a beautiful love story. A story between an outsider who is trying to find her place in a new home and a man tackling his own inhibitions. A story of desire that lets us think about ideas of what we want to see and what is the truth.

At the end Decision to Leave makes us not leave the film with what is presented but makes us think more about it (plus its just a fun film).