South Korean director Park Chan-wook, conjurer of dark, sexually charged dreams such as “Oldboy” (2003) and “Stoker” (2013), gives us his most Hitchcockian effort to date. One of the music tracks is even entitled “Rear Window.” “Decision to Leave,” is a film noir about a young, married detective named Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) who falls madly in love with a mysterious Chinese immigrant named Seo-rae (a spellbinding Tang Wei), who is probably a murderer. Does he care?
We meet Detective Hae-jun as he and his partner investigate the scene of a possible homicide. A climber has fallen to his death from a great rocky tower overlooking the city of Busan. The detectives interrogate the dead man’s wife Seo-rae, who claims repeatedly and falsely that her Korean is not very good. She has an alibi. But Det. Hae-jun, who is happily married, finds himself completely infatuated. It is a classic case of amor fou, aka mad love. Hae-jun, an audiophile who suffers from insomnia, does not live with his wife (Jung-yi Seo, “Parasite”) and imagines himself with Seo-rae using out-of-body experiences. He also stakes out her flat in his car in part because it is the only way he gets a good night’s sleep. She often wakes him in the morning.
She works as a caregiver and has access to drugs like fentanyl. Sometimes, she eats ice cream for dinner. She smokes, and former-smoker Hae-jun smokes with her. His wife, who works at a nuclear power plant and lives in the seaside town of Ipo, smells the smoke on him, and it’s like she smells betrayal. Courtesy of composer Yeong-wook Jo (“The Handmaiden”), we hear tense strings and playful horns, along with wooden drumming.
Co-written with frequent collaborator Seo-kyeong Jeong (“The Handmaiden”), “Decision to Leave” is in many ways like Hitchcock’s classic “Vertigo” to the second power. Yes, there will be a breathtaking rooftop chase. With its besotted policeman and dangerous, beautiful woman, it obviously recalls the Hitchcock film. But with a plot strewn with crow’s feathers, blowflies, cellphones and cigarette butts, it is even more morbid, more labyrinthine and more poetic.
The way that Park shows us how his femme fatale outwitted the police and then shows us Hae-jun following the same steps (leave your fear of heights at the door) in his mind is brilliant and creepy. A manner of death is the same in both films. But “Decision to Leave” adroitly adds cellphone technology to the traditional film noir mix. The cop is so crazy in love he is willing to share in his lover’s guilt and cover up her cellphone tracks.
In spite of all this pent-up passion, “Decision to Leave” is a big step back from the crazy, naked lust of “The Handmaiden.” The sex in “Decision to Leave” is restrained. As a result, the tension can only build. A broken man, Hae-jun moves in with his wife to start anew. Of course, Seo-rae reappears like a wraith, her new husband, a high-tech thief whose coarse nickname is Slappy, by her side. But now she is the obsessed and besotted one. Will someone else have to die before the two mad lovers can be united? Stolen soft shell turtles will figure in the film’s perverse climax. Will the fatal nymph in the blue-green dress return to the sea? Will Wei of such films as “Lust, Caution” and “Blackhat” get the best actress Academy Award nomination that she deserves?
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'DECISION TO LEAVE'
Grade: A-
(In South Korean and Chinese with subtitles)
No MPAA rating (contains violence and disturbing and gruesome images)
Running time: 2:18
How to watch: Now in theaters
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