New & now: Decision to Leave
Park Chan-wook does it again with a thriller about the allure of being seen.
“Kiss me, please kiss me, kiss me out of desire, baby, not consolation.”—Jeff Buckley, “Last Goodbye”
Even the shyest and most reserved among us want to be seen by someone. Not necessarily seen in the stared at sense, but acknowledged: I see you. I recognize you. You exist. That acknowledgment from a certain person can have a powerful hold, so much so that you might be willing to turn your entire life upside down not to lose it, as Park Chan-wook demonstrates in Decision to Leave, a languid, darkly funny thriller that also happens to be the most romantic movie of the year.
Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) is a Busan detective on the homicide beat. He’s in a long distance marriage, only seeing his wife on the weekends, and their interactions with each other, even when they’re having sex, seem detached, more friendly than romantic. Struggling with insomnia, Hae-jun himself seems detached, floating through his life and only really coming alive when he has a new case.
His latest investigation involves a wealthy mountain climber who dies after a fall. It seems like it might be a suicide, but the man’s much younger wife, a Chinese immigrant named Seo-rae (Tang Wei) draws suspicion, mostly because she’s neither surprised nor particularly upset about her husband’s death. Though Seo-rae has a seemingly solid alibi, Hae-jun is slow to close the case, not just because he genuinely thinks she might have had something to do with it, but because he’s fascinated by her. He recognizes something familiar in her, the same sense of floating unseen in the world.
Using his insomnia as an excuse, Hae-jun spends his evenings watching Seo-rae, noting her little quirks, like eating ice cream for dinner, and falling asleep on her couch in front of the same old movie every night. Seo-rae doesn’t mind that she’s considered a suspect, or that she’s being watched, and even turns the tables on Hae-jun, following him as he tracks down a suspect on a different case. They ease into an odd friendship/flirtation where he cooks for her and they gently tease each other. She’s compassionate and gentle about his chronic insomnia and helps him fall asleep, as opposed to his wife, who mostly just suggests various homeopathic treatments with what feels like increasing frustration and bafflement. In return, he listens to her as she talks about her unhappy marriage, and the death of her mother.
This is, of course, how a lot of affairs start, when someone provides a person with something their spouse isn’t giving them. Hae-jun is deeply lonely, and it’s clear that the arrangement with his wife isn’t working for him, but he’s either reluctant or unable to change it. Seo-rae has no friends or family in South Korea, and the only connections she’s made there are with the elderly clients at her job as a homecare aide. Under the most normal circumstances, this is a recipe for a regrettable encounter, but the fact that Seo-rae was (and may still be) the prime suspect in a murder complicates things rather a bit more.
“Cop gets romantically tangled up with suspect” is a core plot in the erotic thriller genre, as seen in Sea of Love and Basic Instinct. Considering how the heat is turned up to maximum in Thirst and The Handmaiden, one would expect Park Chan-wook to take that same approach here. It’s surprisingly restrained, however, in a way that suggests that there’s more going on here than two people who just desperately want to fuck. It would be easy to say that Hae-jun and Seo-rae are just obsessed with each other, but they interact with each other as if they’re playacting some alternate universe version of themselves, where they met under different circumstances, and are with who they were meant to be with.
The safe distance they keep from each other when they’re talking says everything you need to know about what they feel for one another. The most powerfully intimate moment is the gasp Hae-jun lets out when Seo-rae touches his face. It’s as if he’s forgotten what it’s like to be touched by someone with love, and not obligation. She knows what he needs. She sees him.
Obviously I won’t spoil anything regarding the mystery of Seo-rae’s husband, but honestly, it’s the least interesting part of the movie. That’s not a criticism, just a fact of how the story works. We know from the minute Hae-jun meets Seo-rae that, no matter how involved she may or may not be in the case, she’s dug into his brain and won’t let go for a very long time. There’s an exhilaration in that that we only feel, if we’re lucky, maybe a few times in our lives. It’s beautiful to be seen. It’s terrifying. It’s everything.
Great work. I originally wanted to see this just because it was directed by Park Chan-wook, but your review's giving me major Wong Kar-wai vibes so now I NEED to see it!