When Hae-jun arrives at the foot of a rocky peak from which a man apparently threw himself, he hasn’t slept for about 48 hours. However, the lack of sleep has in no way altered the detective’s deduction faculties, who immediately suspect a disguised homicide. When he questions Seo-rae, the victim’s widow, and she does not show the slightest grief, his opinion is confirmed. Only here, the insomniac and married cop is, like moviegoers, already bewitched by the suspect. With Decision to leavean enigmatic detective and love story, winner of the Best Director Award at Cannes, Park Chan-wook amazes again.
Thus, the procedural aspect aimed at elucidating the murder(s) is carried out in concert with the sentimental framework – the latter free from sentimentality. Certainly, mixing romance and police investigation is in itself banal, but what Park Chan-wook offers is absolutely not. Several factors contribute to this beautiful singularity.
Firstthe film is based on two complex protagonists, densely written, and interpreted with additional nuances, some of which, we will come back to this, have a different meaning. a posteriori. Secondthe plot, although fairly developing the criminal and passionate parts, never becomes two-headed. Third, neither of said flaps goes quite in the expected direction. This, because, quartothe filmmaker once again pulls off a splendid narrative bluff.
That is to say, as in old boywhere the sequestered protagonist believes he is avenging himself, when he ultimately understands that his jailer continued all this time to exert his own revenge on him, or in lady revengewhere the tenor and motives of revenge—a recurring theme—turn out to be more appalling than initially suggested, or again in Misswhere the nature of the dramatic and interpersonal stakes is not what one initially believes, Decision to leave provides a late revelation, which changes the course of the film.
Clever writing
Park Chan-wook and Jeong Seo-kyeong, his collaborator since lady revenge, turn out as usual to be extremely clever in their scenario, which pretends to go in one direction, when in reality it goes in another (often, as here, it is a fascinating female character who leads the way ). The brilliance of the case lies in the fact that these almost 180-degree narrative turns, characteristic of the work of the South Korean master, always seem honest since clues, not necessarily perceived as such at the time but sown in places, will have prepared upstream for the subsequent turnaround.
These indications manifest themselves in various ways: a decorative element taken up as a symbolic motif, a seemingly banal piece of information thrown out in the course of a conversation, a line that seems strangely out of context when it is formulated…
This is particularly the case with this proverb from Confucius that Seo-rae whispers to Hae-jun: “The man of heart likes the mountains, the man of intelligence likes the water. »
At this stage, we already know that the mountain, through this rocky peak down which the (fatal?) woman may have precipitated her late husband, plays a significant role in the story. When, later, during a denouement which summons in equal measures Thirst, this is my blood and Adventure (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960), the sea suddenly invades the screen, the image does not seem in the least to come out of nowhere, its coming having been announced in some way by Seo-rae.
A harmonious flow
One suspects it, Helping the Price of the direction, the realization is, typically for the scenario writer, virtuoso. Downright brilliant sequences abound, but always flow smoothly; nothing is bombastic, stuffy or precious — hats off to the sublime cinematography of Kim Ji-yong (Hansel and Gretel, A Bittersweet Life).
Nevertheless, some passages become more ingrained in the memory than others: when Hae-jun, from his unmarked car, mentally projects himself into the suspect’s house in order to share, without being there, the same space as ‘she ; when Seo-rae stands behind Hae-jun at the top of the peak and it’s unclear whether she’ll push him or hug him on an almost supernatural night out…
Splendid narrative and formal success, Decision to leave reaffirms not only that Park Chan-wook has his place in the pantheon of 7e art, but above all, that it is here to stay.