Okay, I’ll be honest, Decision to Leave might be one of the hardest films I’ve had to define. Just when I think it’s a buddy comedy, it turns on its head and becomes more of a neo-noir (but more in terms of story and characterization than mise-en-scene), and then right when it’s settling into that, it becomes a thriller. There’s something very stylized about the film certainly, which is a familiar characteristic of Park Chan-wook’s other work. But beyond the careful placement of items in each scene and careful edits excluding the more grisly implied deaths, there’s discord throughout the film. So many of the action scenes feel oddly removed, like we’re watching what an action scene should look like as opposed to what one actually looks like.
As the main character Detective Jang Hae-joon diligently takes on cases and solves crimes in Busan, he is plagued nightly by insomnia. Once his insomnia was introduced as a particular struggle of his, it reframed some of the stylized elements of the film for me. We’re seeing the events of the film from his perspective and as he spends hours looking at surveillance and recordings of witness interviews, he has become numb to his job. None of the ordinarily exciting things in life like action scenes or scenes where his detective partner makes a fool of himself are shot to look exciting because it is all rote to Hae-joon. They only help to contrast the change in him that occurs after he begins his surveillance of a widow, Song Seo-rae, whose husband’s death he has been tasked with solving.
Seo-rae and the case consume Hae-joon as he digs deeper into why and how she could have killed her husband. She’s written as a femme fatale, impossibly beautiful and implicitly dangerous. Before she is introduced, every character is straight-forward and to the point; she is the first anomaly to the rule, which is why she seems to intrigue Hae-joon. As the investigation carries on, they grow closer and his insomnia is less of a burden. Even with her sweet demeanor, there’s always a faint suspicion that she could be a killer — maybe that’s what makes her so magnetic. As Hae-joon continues to be drawn to her, we the audience may ourselves begin to reason that maybe she really is an innocent woman whose husband died in an unfortunate accident. The more pessimistic amongst us, though, might see that while she does seem sweet, she’s clearly melting away his professional boundaries and he’s willfully fooled because of her beauty.
Whatever you believe, it’s impossible not to be engaged until the end by trying to uncover the motivations of all these people. Through twists and turns, Decision to Leave keeps you on edge, unsure of what happens next like only the best thriller can. There are so many themes at work (horror, romance, desperation, devotion) that leave you constantly pondering what is next for our characters and how their decisions will play out. Perhaps the most confounding thing about the film is the characters we find within it — just as we think we understand them, and the film’s genre, they change. Whether you are coming to this film as a Park Chan-wook devotee or a new viewer, this changeling of a film will surely keep you guessing as it unfolds.
Decision to Leave will be screened at IU Cinema on February 10 and February 11 as part of the International Art House Series.
Noni Ford is a freelance writer based in the Midwest and a graduate of the Indiana University Media School. She’s worked in voice coordination, independent film, and literary management, and primarily writes film criticism and short stories. She’s currently pursuing a Masters degree at IU’s Luddy School and is an IU Libraries Moving Image Archive Fellow.