A Romantic Thriller that confounds expectation
Posted on 26th October 2023
Park Chan-wook has a seemingly effortless ability to confound expectation. Very few would have thought the director of Oldboy would have turned his hand to the overt eroticism of The Handmaiden, and with Decision to Leave he has done it again. For all its focus on the darkest impulses of human nature, there is an elegant restraint to this handsomely presented movie. While it’s substance owes a clear debt to Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct (albeit without the rude bits) the style is all Hitchcock.
Park Hae-il plays the dogged, workaholic detective Hae-jun with a weary stoicism that makes his fall from grace all the more shocking, while Tand Wei is the classic femme fatale, a woman that beguiles him, even as he begins to suspect she may be hiding more than she reveals. Together they spin a hypnotic tale that twists this way and that in a fashion that requires the closest of attention, yet has an elliptical dreamlike quality that seems one step away from making perfect sense. And if that seems an overly oblique summary of what to expect, I can only say that the less you know going in, the more enriching the experience of watching this latter day film-noir will be.
Gorgeous to look at and with a score that tips it’s hat to Bernard Herrmann, it’s a strangely old-fashioned movie, that reveals its charms slowly. Stick with it, however, and Park’s signature ability to surprise and wrong foot his audience is very much in evidence. As the star crossed lovers edge their way towards a conclusion that is as devastating as it is inevitable, the direction of travel might be anticipated, but not the destination.