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While the success of Knives Out and Murder on the Orient Express have, in theory, stoked a resurgence of the whodunit, that genre’s close cousin, the noir, hasn’t yet had its day back in the sun. Adrian Lyne’s Deep Water maybe counts—it’s certainly an erotic thriller—but that’s pretty much it. In America, anyway. Over in South Korea, the masterful director Park Chan-wook has made the stylish, surprising Decision to Leave, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday.
Mostly set in Busan, Decision to Leave concerns a dogged investigator, Hae-jun (Park Hae-il), and his shifty prime suspect, Seo-rae (Tang Wei). Her husband has been killed in what might have been a simple, if gruesome, climbing accident, unless it was murder most foul. Seo-rae is young and beautiful, an odd match for the older fellow that Hae-jun and his partner find at the bottom of a mountain. Maybe that’s clue number one.
As any good potential killer must be, Seo-rae is haunted by a difficult past: years earlier, she was found in a shipping container along with a number of other Chinese immigrants trying to make their way into Korea. That stokes a certain empathy in Hae-jun, as does the evidence that Seo-rae’s marriage was an abusive one. She speaks (we’re told, though I’m sure Korean speakers will instantly recognize) in a stilted, sort of old-fashioned way, which is either endearing or sinister depending on the angle the film is peering at her from.
Either way, Hae-jun’s interest in Seo-rae’s possible guilt—really just his interest in her—swiftly becomes something verging on obsession. As Hae-jun observes his subject from stake-out distance, Chan-wook places him inside her workplace and home, as if he is mutely following behind her as she goes about her day. It’s a clever visual trick that immediately communicates the intensity of Hae-jun’s tunneling vision, voyeuristic but somehow not exactly creepy.
There is certainly an air of danger lurking in Decision to Leave, but for much of its peculiar, beguiling run, the film is almost a comedy. Chan-wook and his co-screenwriter Jeong Seo-kyeong make light of the more banal aspects of police work—like wondering how expensive a lunch one can charge to the department—and the cozy orderedness of Hae-jun’s life at home in a small town with his wife, Jung-an (Lee Jung-hyun), whom he only sees on weekends.
The filmmaking has a bouncy energy, full of flourishes. Scenes dissolve or cut into others with echoing imagery and motifs, layer stacking upon layer in this merry little mystery. Throughout, composer Jo Yeong-wook’s throwback score, with its swells of Old Hollywood strings, almost plays as camp, an aural wink to the audience that none of this should be taken all that seriously. We’re just having fun with lots of cherished tropes.
But Chan-wook is a sly filmmaker, and he is quietly, bit by bit, guiding Decision to Leave toward an unexpected place. We move forward in time and another crime occurs, with one striking similarity to the mountain incident. Some of the film’s earlier lightness persists—Lee is especially valuable in that regard—but the film sheds much of its playfulness while donning a more somber comportment.
Which might come as a disappointment to viewers who have been enjoying the twisty, arch noir. Count me among them. There’s been so much lugubriousness at Cannes this year that the initial tonic of Decision to Leave was a lovely reprieve. But, Chan-wook does, in the end, want this film to seep in more deeply, as something closer to romantic drama than femme fatale murder mystery. He builds toward a denouement that is downright sad—it’s beautifully staged, of course, but makes for a dismayingly grim closing note.
Unless I was viewing it all wrong and there was yet crucial another trick that I missed. Decision to Leave no doubt deserves a repeat viewing. Even if the finale is still a slightly hard to parse bummer, there is all the other meticulous craftwork to appreciate and discover anew. In this instance, maybe there is no getting too close to the case.
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