Decision to Leave

What it is

Decision to Leave is a feature film Park Chan-wook released in 2022. Its frame: a detective investigating a man's death meets the dead man's wife, and suspicion and attraction grow side by side. Park Hae-il plays the detective and Tang Wei the wife. The screenplay was written by Jeong Seo-kyeong and Park Chan-wook, who had also worked together on Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Thirst and The Handmaiden. Because it lays a romance over the skeleton of a police procedural, expecting only one of those genres will lead to a different experience than you planned.

Where Park changed

Coming to this film with Oldboy or The Handmaiden in mind, the first surprise is how much the intensity has been dialled down. Instead of graphic violence or nudity, tension comes from small things: a look, a gesture, a gap in conversation. Feelings are often said indirectly, or in another language altogether. By not leaning on shock, it makes the audience examine the frame more closely, which also makes it a relatively easy entry point for anyone new to Park's films.

Language as a device

A key axis of the film is conversation between two people with different native languages. One is not fluent in Korean and sometimes relies on a translation app, conveying feelings through slightly off-kilter phrasing instead of the exact word. That mismatch makes ordinary sentences linger strangely, and the same words land differently depending on who hears them. Even with subtitles, staying aware of which language a line is originally in changes the texture of a scene. It helps to know that some nuances are hard to carry through subtitles alone.

The pleasure of reading the frame

As you would expect from Park, the compositions are meticulous. Several scenes have the camera showing what a character cannot see, or lay one character's imagination and reality in the same frame. The image often speaks before the dialogue does, so rather than trying to catch everything at once, it pays to enjoy what newly appears on a second viewing.

• Where eyes are directed and where the camera sits
• Layered images: mirrors, glass, screens within screens
• Distinctive transitions linking scene to scene
• Contrasts in nature: fog and water, mountains and sea

The people behind it

Cinematography is by Kim Ji-yong and music by Cho Young-wuk. Cho has worked on many of Park's films, starting with Oldboy. The song Mist, sung by Jung Hoon-hee, is used at important moments, and, true to its title, mist is an image that envelops the whole film. Recurring images of mountains and sea, fog and water tie the mood of each place to the characters' shifting emotions.

How to take the genre

Watched as a procedural, you want to know the truth of the case; watched as a romance, you want to know about the relationship. The film keeps interlocking those two questions. The tension that uncovering the truth might destroy the relationship drives the whole work. So viewers hoping for the thrill of a whodunit may find it slow, and those hoping for a romance may find it cold. Accepting it as a film standing on the border of both genres makes it far easier to enjoy.

What to watch for the first time

Notice when the detective's act of watching someone starts to take on a different meaning. The boundary between observation and surveillance, between interest and obsession, is at the heart of the emotions the film explores. Remembering the protagonist's repeated habits, objects and frequently visited places lets you catch the moments when those same elements return in a new way. Lines are built to resurface later, so keeping in mind any phrase that snags on you is worthwhile.

Things to keep in mind

There are crime scenes and a dead body on screen, so check the age rating. That said, the explicit content is much more restrained than in Park's earlier films. Interpretations of the ending diverge widely and most analysis assumes you have seen it, so first-time viewers should read those pieces afterwards. Nuance in the dialogue and small sounds matter a great deal here, so watching somewhere quiet, rather than in a noisy setting, is recommended.