'Decision To Leave' Review: Park Chan-Wook Conjures Elusive Illusions & A Seductive Romance [Cannes]

“Decision To Leave” deals in illusions. Is Song Seo-rae’s dress blue or green? Is she really the innocent wife she claims to be? In her living room, she sits surrounded by sapphire wallpaper, its lines suggesting the mountains near her Busan home that she so loathes — but they could easily be seen as waves, too. Opening up about her fear of heights to police detective Jang Hae-joon, she recites a Confucious saying: “Wise people like water. Benevolent people like the mountains.” They say the wise are fond of water because of its ability to move freely and weave its way around any obstacle in its path. What does that say about Seo-rae? 

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It’s no coincidence that illusions and conundrums appear in a Park Chan-wook film. The filmmaker has mastered the ability to conjure elaborate plots that blissfully unveil themselves as the details accumulate, and “Decision to Leave” is no different. It’s only surprising that it’s taken so long for the director to try his hand at a detective story, a genre that’s so entrenched in mystery. It may lack the propulsive energy of “The Handmaiden” or “Oldboy,” but it’s a film that grows richer with time, as the complications pile up and the possibility of love falls out of reach. 

In Busan, Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) is restless. The youngest inspector on the city’s police force, he’s always hungry for new cases. His doting wife, who he shares an apartment with away in the misty town of Ipo, concedes that he needs “murder and violence in order to be happy.” And then an experienced climber, Ki Do-soo, falls to his death from a nearby mountain — but was it merely an accident, or did someone push him off? His mysterious wife Seo-rae (Tang Wei, from “Lust, Caution,” inscrutable and mesmerizing) is the cause of immediate suspicion. “I worry when he does not come back from the mountain, thinking he might die at last,” Seo-rae testifies. “At last…” Hae-joon says, noting her peculiar word choice. There are other behavioral quirks that he finds intriguing. Her apparent lack of shock over her husband’s death. How she delays speaking to the police to tend to her caregiver job, arguing that “living old people come before dead husbands.” How she slips on a word during her interrogation, dips her head, and quietly giggles to herself.

A flirtatious interrogation where the pair share premium sushi boxes blossoms into a love story made tragic by the positions they’re in — for the only way they can be together is to leave the “accident” unresolved. Sensual but never sexual, the closest the characters ever come to showing skin is when Seo-rae lifts her skirt to reveal scratches on her leg. The intense chemistry between Hae-joon and Seo-rae instead manifests itself in hesitant touches, aided by the film’s intricate sound design: the brushing of calloused hands, the intimate act of applying chapstick to the other’s lips.

“Decision to Leave” sees Park at his most restrained, and yet he hasn’t sacrificed anything in visual precision. Even with the information overload that can make the plot feel at times confusing, exposition is delivered seamlessly. One scene establishes Hae-joon’s fixation on the case while making love to his wife, as he stares at a patch of mold on a bedroom wall that crossfades to an x-ray. 

In another moment, the camera looks up the towering mountain through the reflection of the deceased climber’s eye, obscured by an ant traveling over his body. Technology is another tool of observation, as the camera takes the perspective of laptop and phone screens looking directly at its user, giving the feeling of constant surveillance. And yet, the menace of being watched dissipates for Hae-joon and Seo-rae. She takes a liking to his nightly stakeouts outside her home, as if his presence is more protective than aggressive. For the insomniac detective, the stakeout is also one of the few places he can sleep — spying on Seo-rae is a comfort. The lines between cop and suspect, lover and foe grow ever increasingly blurred.

Hae-joon is consumed by his unsolved cases, going so far as to tape crime scene photos up behind a curtain in his home. But here’s a case that’s begging to stay open, if only so Seo-rae can stay close. In that way, the film is so much more than the average police procedural. For one, it’s very funny. From the comically dangerous way the detectives scale up the mountain to Hae-joon’s awkward text messaging, Park has still kept his jet-black humor intact. But “Decision to Leave” is ultimately a seductive romance, one made all the more fascinating by the boundaries the characters tread but never dare cross. Stories of longing are so tantalizing because they hang in that gray space of potential. The build-up is often more gratifying than the release, and Park wrings it for all its worth. [A-]

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