Into Park Chan-wook’s twisted romance, Decision to Leave
Park Chan-wook might have woken up one day and decided to remake Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000). And he did so but with more mystery, crime, and sexual tension that would make Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, two of the most beautiful actors of our time, fold.
Love is perceived differently. Some people leave it up to fate, destiny, or whatever mumbo jumbo they want to believe in. Some people simply do not care, and they are the ones who often make the most foolish choices—ones that will ruin relationships made and forged, undo marriages, rekindle love affairs that have lost their fire, find love in an empty chair or a blank canvas, or revisit what could have been with someone they’ve had a failed relationship with. People who make these choices forget about their partners, their families, and the relationships they’ve made along the way, and just leave it all behind for their deadly curiosity of wanting to know if there’s a greener pasture on the other side. In the case of Decision to Leave (2022), the choice comes from an undeniable attraction to someone. It’s a movie about all these things and more.
Acclaimed South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook’s official entry to the recent Cannes Film Festival and South Korea’s official entry to the 2023 Academy Awards, with Park Hae-il and Tang Wei leading an outstanding cast, is a clever story of forbidden attraction, yearning, and unsettling discontentment. To say that its story and pace have similarities to Wong’s In the Mood for Love is fine, but the camera work is a world of its own. Capturing and making each scene tenser via camera work is another thing Park is known for, and Decision to Leave is rich with it.
‘I wanted to make a movie that was pure and classic—a movie stripped of everything but love.’
Directing cinematic gems like the Vengeance Trilogy, namely Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003), and Lady Vengeance (2005), and being lauded by the likes of Quentin Tarantino, among other magnificent directors, Park Chan-Wook always delivers, and Decision to Leave is a definite must-watch for film buffs and curious-to-a-t-about-romance alike.
Decision to Leave has an allure that’s similar to how a person is captivated by another person’s eyes, or the way they wear their cap, or the way that person looks in a white dress paired with some Nike Internationalists, hoping that they’re not a robot from the future but a real live person. It’s a hypnotizing crime movie that is often clouded by the forbidden romance between its leads. Just like a hazy echo within a memory, Tang Wei’s Chinese widow Seo-Rae has so much mystery behind her that Park Hae-il’s seasoned detective Hae-joon often has stiff interactions with her. But then, these interactions turn into a perplexing connection that is almost romantic but never fully blossoms, oftentimes getting put off by outside forces and challenging circumstances coming in between.
Through vague conversations and almost-sweet nothings, and trying to help Hae-joon get to sleep with words like “You are a jellyfish. You don’t have eyes or a nose. Or thoughts. Or joy, or pain. Absolutely no emotions. The water’s guiding you. It pushes you towards me, and away from everything that’s happened today,” Seo-rae continues to be an all-consuming puzzle leaving the detective at his wits’ end. Is that not how every love affair starts?
With starting something comes the inescapable ending. An all-too-vague finish to a wonderful start, with nothing but the sound of the waves crashing to the shore, and maybe even the imaginary jellyfish, in mind. From picturesque memories, vivid daydreams, unending wallpapers with intricate patterns, and a tremendous yearning, we eventually find out that nothing is what it seems. And nothing is the same after Decision to Leave.
Winning the Palme d’Or for Best Director at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Park’s movie has since been released almost worldwide with the help of world cinema-streaming site Mubi and cinephile paradise Letterboxd.
Outside the crime-slash-thriller narrative, Decision to Leave is about abandoning all reason just to be with someone, much like Hae-joon’s bewildering enchantment with Seo-rae’s mysterious charm. And to say that this is pure romance is an understatement. It is romance, and it is an obsession, where only a thin line separates one from the other. It is moments that make us think that love is love. It is more, it is less, and it is what we have, and what we do not have. People long for this great love that is only seen in movies or are read in books, or sung in sad melodies disguised as love songs, and find out in the end that it is not what it seems.