Rent Decision to Leave (2022)

Police detective falls in love with Chinese-Korean femme fatale - Decision to Leave review by Philip in Paradiso

This is a somewhat strange and enigmatic film. I think it is partly due to the cultural factor: it is a South Korean film, with subtitles. There is quite a bit of humour here and there, even though the film mostly is a kind of romantic thriller, or a Korean neo-noir, if you like. But the humour appears based on puns and language-related confusions, at times, and the sub-titles are clearly struggling to render the plays on words. This is a significant aspect of the story, as the lead female character (the femme fatale) is Chinese-born, and claims to have problems expressing herself in Korean.

Having said all this, it is a good and interesting film, even though I do not feel it is the masterpiece some have claimed, and I have seen other South Korean romantic thrillers of this kind that were far more compelling. The storyline is centred on the married police detective: while investigating the Chinese-born woman, who is suspected of having murdered her husband, he falls in love with her and becomes obsessed with her. The rest follows. His fascination is partly personal (he is besotted with her), and partly professional (he wants to establish whether she is guilty or not) - the two presenting a difficult contradiction he has to manage.

Ostensibly, the film is about the relationship between the 2 of them, and about her. However, I found it is mostly about him and his situation, and his obsession with her. She remains a little bit of a blank page. Her motivations, more particularly, for doing what she does or is accused of having done, are never really clear. I also found the chemistry between the 2 of them unconvincing. More particularly, despite being supposed to be your average tough cop, he does not look charismatic at all to me; on the contrary, he is a bit dull in many ways. So, there is that unconvincing core at the centre of the story, and I found it difficult to truly feel involved, but this may also be due to the cultural differences I have referred to, above.

I still recommend the film: it is an intelligent and interesting film, albeit overlong.

Excellent - Decision to Leave review by PJ

Difficult to describe, but there is lots of 5 star press reviews on this, involving, intoxicating, beautifully shot. Found the second half a little difficult to follow at times but overall a brilliant Beautiful film with a great performance from Tang Wei. If you like Park Chang wook films it's a must see

Femme-fatale thriller with lots to admire - Decision to Leave review by PD

Park Chan-wook's latest involves overworked detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il - very good indeed as the perpetually on edge insomniac) who is—in true clichéd, noir form—married to his job more than to his actual wife, who lives in quiet, foggy Iso while Hae-Jun works weeks in Busan, where the crime and murder that sustains him runs rampant. His latest case involves the death of a mountain-climber which, though by all appearances an accident, quickly becomes suspicious owing to the behaviour of the mountaineer’s much younger Chinese wife, the femme-fatale Seo-rae (beautifully played by Tang Wei). However, Hae-jun’s further scrutiny of the woman becomes antithetical to his actual investigation as he slowly grows closer to her and from this point, it becomes clear that it's the complexities of their mutual attraction that will be at the forefront of the action rather than the various mysteries involving the murder cases (which are the least interesting part of the film). The director is largely successful at pulling us in to their self-destructive dynamic, partly via very astute cinemaphotography (pretty much every scene is very visually arresting indeed) and partly through a (generally) erudite script which (at least until the end) eschews melodrama and both conceals and reveals in equal measure; there's also a surprising amount of humour melded into the dark mix, which is very effectively done. On the other hand, the profound yearning between the characters and potential eroticism from that kind of unexecuted connection is so overt that the film occasionally over-reaches itself and you do get the impression that the director is trying rather too hard to manufacture a Hitchcock-style masterpiece. Meanwhile, the various plot twists become more and more implausible as the film goes on (well over two hours, and it felt like it) and the ending is perhaps the weakest part of the film precisely because of its intended tragic extravagance. All in all, however, lots to admire if you've the patience.