An interrogation room. A he, the detective (Park Hae-il), and a she (Tang Wei), the suspect that he is investigating in the case of her husband’s death. Sitting in front of each other, at the same table, staring each other in the eyes. The perverse laws of attraction allow us to guess from the very beginning that there will be a love story between the so-called man of the law and the presumptive killer – a love born under the sign of fatality, and a game of cat and mouse where it’s never quite clear who the mouse or the cat is.

Decision to Leave has a weak, extremely predictable script and suffers from a sort of naivete that is curiously uncharacteristic of Park Chan-wook. Idealistic words are thrown around, and feelings are experienced at childishly heightened levels, unlike in the case of mature love, but rather as they would be in the schoolyard, where two teenagers are trying not to surpass each other in a game of “who makes the most stupid compliment”. The film searches for ingenuity, but slips and falls into cliches – for example, the detective, Hae-jun, a pathological insomniac, is unable to fall asleep, save for the times that he’s in the presence of the suspect, Seo-rae, who shows herself more capable of understanding him than his own wife. The two are soulmates who have only just discovered each other, and their love seems impossible and ineffable since a crime is sitting in the middle of things. Inevitably, the more things are investigated, the more it turns out that Seo-rae isn’t exactly innocent – however, she’s not fully guilty either. Essentially,

Decision to Leave is a sweet love story packaged as a detective flick.

A contemporary Hichcock

But, as they say, when you know the ending – the prey –, the chase is all the fun. Besides, this is what these two characters who often spy on each other from a distance prove, as they follow each other with a sort of obsessive passion. The savor in Park’s film isn’t a result of its narrative, but rather of the process that we are witnessing, of the visual language that the director employs to delineate this captivating game of domination and obsession into which the detective and his suspect end up falling. And no matter how many faults it has in its script, Decision to Leave is a directorial masterclass, a maximalist exercise in virtuosity.

Park Chan-wook’s declared admiration for Hitchcock seems to have reached its apex in Decision to Leave, not only due to its detective-like approach to psycho-sexual tensions, through its usage of individuals that are consumed by their obsessions or through cheeky references to falls from considerable heights. Park Chan-wook is a contemporary Hitchcock precisely when he toys around with interplays in gazes and cuts in a highly articulate form of cinematic language, which adeptly and fluidly guides viewers through the investigation and the detective’s thought processes. The shots deliver all the necessary information through their mise-en-scene and editing, often removing the need for the usage of words that would explain the plot, emotions, or hints: a wedding ring that lies next to a running accelerometer says everything there is to be said about how intense the feelings of an unfaithful husband are. Changes in perspective and focus are very precise in the way that they creatively re-arrange the borders of a real space and of an inner time, blurring the differences between the two, using third-party processes and subjective first-person shots to relay the fantasies and feelings that Hae-jun and Seo-rae cannot express. When closeness cannot be rendered physically, it’s executed visually, through mental spaces that cancel out diegetic spaces and thus reunite the same protagonists.

Technology, part of the plot and script’s fiber

Above everything, the absolute trump card of Decision to Leave lies in the way that Park Chan-wook related to the technologies of the present. Rarely did on-screen technology seem so organically enmeshed within visual language. Love in the times of iPhones is often represented very clumsily and unnaturally, as if the phone’s display would be an enemy of the cinema screen. Decision to Leave responds in a very genuine manner to the reality of our days – voice messages, texts, video and audio recordings, vibrations –, which all work in a sort of symbiosis with the cinematic image and actively participate in the sum of information that is delivered within the shot. Technology is an integral part of the plot and script’s fiber – there is a language barrier between Hae-jun and Seo-rae, and the two often communicate through apps that translate between Korean and Chinese, as she is of Chinese descent. The detective’s diary entries are no longer some notes scribbled on a pad, as they used to be, but rather, the investigation is recorded in voice memos, on an electronic smartwatch. This is what a contemporary detective looks like.

Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave is a very precise mechanism – and it even runs the risk of ultimately being too precise. Its cogs and wheels turn mechanically, animated by ingeniousness and kinetic energy, yet not always by soulfulness. It is a sleek, glossy packaging, which is used en masse by contemporary Korean cinema makes it seem cold and much too calibrated, and an audience that is much rather interested in a type of arthouse cinema that is focused on slow moments and ambiguities might not enjoy it and would be much more likely to notice how childish its script is. Decision to Leave is a proper film – and I’m saying this both as a way to praise and to accuse it at the same time.

 Decision to leave is now in theaters.

Dora Leu

Graduated with a BA in film directing and a MA in film studies from UNATC; she's also studied history of art. Also collaborates with the Acoperisul de Sticla film magazine and is a former coordinator of FILM MENU. She's dedicated herself to '60-'70s Japanese cinema and Irish post-punk music bands. Still keeps a picture of Leslie Cheung in her wallet.