‘Decision To Leave Movie Review: Park Chanwook Reinvents Storytelling In A Quiet Film That Is More Romance Than Mystery

As Hae-joon digs deeper into the case, her increasing interactions with Seo-rae, while procedural in nature, are marked by the easy familiarity they both settle into. Park's story here focuses on the spatial intimacy that the two quickly assume in each other's lives. Park places this scientific way of life at the center of the criminal process in one of their first encounters, when Hye-joon and Seo-rae finish their meal at the interrogation table and then clean up, like the tired routine they follow every night.

They easily identify with and adapt to each other's rhythms, and their mutual intellectual fascination drives them both to make unusual decisions.

As Hae-joon begins his surveillance routine for suspects, the camera zooms in on Seo-rae and then her house to reveal Hae-joon sitting nearby. On the other hand, Seo-rae also begins to follow Hae-joon in her work, as the two eventually expand her investigation into personality to explore her feelings.

Slightly longer than Park's earlier work , The Decision to Leave is a much more relaxed film, which is not surprising given his recent filmography. However, this understated treatment of human emotion does not measure up to the intensity of the subject matter, which always seems to fill the narrative to the brim and eventually overflow.

Kim Ji Yeon's masterful cinematography lends visual support to a narrative that hinges on unspoken emotions. Ji Yong switches perspectives between the living, the dead and those who never existed. Hye-joon's silent detective mask is sometimes revealed to the audience through a dead man's eyes and more often through the phone's screen. A particularly interesting part of the film, when Hae-joon interrogates Seo-ra, is shot with the characters reflected in a mirror and the camera moves its focus between the four subjects on the screen. It also serves as a cue for the film's second act, mirroring the first in its course but reversing Seo-rae's quest when the chase begins.

Although Hae-jun and Seo-rae are naturally in sync with each other, they also clash in their more open conversations. Seo-rae's possible involvement in the death of her husband, Hae-joon's long marriage threatens their relationship. Park's penchant for the physicality of human emotion is continued in this film, which plays with the theme of communication. Seo-Rae, a Chinese immigrant to Korea, uses translation apps to record her voice for Hae-Joon, who in return buys a set of Chinese beginners' exercise manuals. The decision to leave revolves around the many ways they both try to tear each other apart because they don't want to reveal too much about themselves...much like a police interrogation.

The tension between the two stretches like a rope hanging under the weight of misunderstandings, but threatens to break at the height of their vulnerability. Here Park creates a secret common language between them. Seo-rae gets behavior from Hae-jun as she cooks while listening to her favorite song.

In a whirlwind of murders and unsolved mysteries, Park Chan-Wok reinvents a classic story that we have seen many times before on screen; unhappy lovers whose relationship flirts with societal norms. An eerie circular story in which Park constantly opens and closes the knots that connect Hae-joon and Seo-rae over a decade and various cities in Korea. The decision to leave draws you into a gentle game of cat and mouse.

The decision to leave is currently being broadcast on MUBI