Given that it kicks off with a murder investigation, viewers might reasonably expect Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave to resemble the violent, twisty thrillers the Korean filmmaker is known for, including Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and his most recent film, 2016's The Handmaiden. While it does feature some potentially surprising plot developments and a multi-part structure that recalls The Handmaiden, Decision to Leave is surprisingly restrained and refined, displaying a remarkable level of visual flair, but keeping any explicit violence offscreen.
At first, Detective Jang Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) isn't even sure that his latest case is a murder, when he and his partner investigate the death of a man who died after falling from a cliff. Signs point to suicide, but the police nevertheless put the man's much younger wife, Chinese immigrant Song Seo-rae (Tang Wei), under surveillance. Hae-joon is immediately drawn to the beautiful, poised Seo-rae, who expresses no distress over her husband's death and has clear, precise answers for any questions regarding her whereabouts. He spends hours outside her apartment watching and listening to her mundane activities, and unspoken moments between them seem to indicate a shared desire.
Director Park and cinematographer Kim Ji-yong increase the sense of intimacy by using visual shorthand that places the actors in close proximity to each other. Even when it's clear that there would actually be literal distance between the two characters, they film the actors in the same physical space, like when the characters are having phone conversations with each other or while Hae-joon is making his surveillance recordings. Even the simplest scenes in Decision to Leave are shot with an eye toward enhancing the connection between the pair, who almost never make any physical contact. With its romantic entanglement between police detective and suspect, Decision to Leave recalls Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct, and its eroticism is just as potent even without any graphic sexuality.
Park's approach here is closer to Alfred Hitchcock than Verhoeven, and as the story progresses there are echoes of Vertigo, Suspicion and Rear Window, among other Hitchcock movies. Hae-joon has a devoted wife who puts up with his distractions as he fixates on his cases, and she allows him the distance of staying at an apartment in the city where he works, while she bides her time alone at home.
Nearly everyone in Decision to Leave is emotionally reserved, the opposite of the anger-fueled characters of Park's so-called vengeance trilogy. Is Seo-rae manipulating Hae-joon so she can get away with murder, or is she genuinely drawn to him — or possibly both? Tang (best known to American audiences for her breakout role in Ang Lee's gloriously sensual Lust, Caution) gives a masterful performance as she navigates that delicate balance, and Seo-rae is as alluring to the audience as she is to Hae-joon.
About halfway through, Decision to Leave jumps ahead in time, to another murder investigation involving Hae-joon as the detective and Seo-rae as a potential suspect, and events in the second half eventually illuminate some of the unanswered questions in the first half. Still, this is a movie that relishes its ambiguity and is more focused on the characters' responses to the plot than on the plot itself. Park inserts callbacks to small details that speak volumes about the characters' shifting relationships, making something as simple as a choice of takeout food feel emotionally devastating.
If Decision to Leave isn't as viscerally powerful as some of Park's other work, its meticulous, stately compositions are still stunning works of art, and its characters are likely to stick with viewers even as certain plot details fade. Park has always used violence as an expression of his characters' personal anguish, and in Decision to Leave, he expresses those overwhelming feelings just as effectively without showing a drop of blood. ♦
Decision to Leave
