Decision to Leave

Decision to Leave

Decision to Leave (Heojil Kyolshim) is a South Korean film directed by Park Chan-wook, released in 2022. This romantic neo-noir thriller was acclaimed by international critics and earned its director the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Synopsis

Detective Hae-jun, an insomniac and obsessive investigator, looks into the death of a man found at the bottom of a mountain cliff. The prime suspect is Song Seo-rae, the deceased's widow, a Chinese immigrant whose behavior is strangely calm. As he watches her ever more closely, Hae-jun develops a growing fascination with this elusive woman, blurring the boundaries between professional investigation and personal obsession.

Style and References

Park Chan-wook departs here from the explicit violence of his previous films to explore a more hushed and melancholic register. The film multiplies references to Hitchcock (Vertigo in particular) but reinterprets them through a resolutely Korean sensibility. The virtuoso direction uses phone screens, reflections, and surveillance viewpoints to create a poetics of observation and desire.

Cinematography

Cinematographer Kim Ji-yong creates compositions of striking beauty, contrasting the coldness of urban scenes with the majesty of mountainous and maritime landscapes. Each shot is laden with meaning, each camera movement reveals or conceals emotions. Colors play a central narrative role, from the icy blue of the sea to the misty tones of the mountains.

Themes

The film explores the obsessive nature of love, the porous boundary between desire and suspicion, and the impossibility of truly knowing the other. The relationship between Hae-jun and Seo-rae is a subtle power game where each observes and is observed, manipulates and is manipulated. The question of language (Seo-rae uses a translation app) adds an extra dimension to the incommunicability between characters.

Reception

Screened in competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the film won the Best Director prize. It was a commercial success in South Korea and received enthusiastic reviews internationally. Despite being selected as South Korea's representative for the Oscars, it was not retained in the final shortlist, sparking debate.

Legacy

Decision to Leave represents a significant evolution in Park Chan-wook's body of work, proving his ability to renew his artistic palette. The film is considered one of the best of 2022 and has reinforced the international recognition of contemporary Korean cinema.