Park says that’s a detail that likely doesn’t land well in translation. At the same time, the English subtitles mark her as formal and erudite, with nothing suggesting she speaks clumsily. Sometimes she even speaks Chinese into her phone and has it translate for her. One major thing about Seo-rae that may not land for non-Korean speakers: She apologizes to everyone she meets for her poor grasp of the language. I wanted to break away from those misjudgments, which is why I tried to get rid of those elements in this film.” The language barrier “So even when I do make a romance film, people will look at the eroticism rather than the romanticism that was supposed to be conveyed. I think because the nudity and violence was so explicit, so in their face, that that’s all they remember when they walk out of the theater. But people haven’t been able to take it in that way. “In my opinion, most of my prior works have also been romance films, films about love. “This is one of the reasons I reduced the elements of nudity and violence in this film,” he tells Polygon. There’s been some debate over exactly what genre label Decision to Leave falls under - whether it’s more a police procedural, a thriller, a murder mystery, or just a romantic drama with some murder in it.įor Park, though, there isn’t much debate. One thing that’s surprised some viewers about Decision to Leave is how much this crime story focuses on romance. Park offered a little insight on that ending and other small mysteries that stand out throughout the film. For her part, she doesn’t initially seem like she’s looking to replace her husband, and it isn’t clear until the end of the movie whether she’s manipulating Hae-jun so he’ll clear her of any possible crime or she’s falling for him as well. Hae-jun’s relationship with his wife seems solid and amiable enough, but he quickly starts to fall for Seo-rae. Seo-rae, a quiet woman who sees right through him, picks up on the dynamic immediately. Hae-jun is a cautious, methodical, melancholy man who obsesses endlessly over his cold cases, and he can’t sleep at night because he thinks too much about all the mysteries he’s never solved. In Decision to Leave, married insomniac detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il, from Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder) investigates Chinese expat Seo-rae (Tang Wei, from Lust, Caution) after her husband dies in what seems like a hiking accident. Polygon spoke to Park about some of those little character details, and how he intended them to shape the story. Speaking with Park through a translator after his film played at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, it immediately became clear he’d packed a lot of layered symbolism into the tiny details of the movie, the kinds of things that are hard to pick up, especially on a first viewing - and for non-Korean speakers, maybe impossible to catch at all. It manages to stand out in a career that’s already produced a number of fantastic, memorable movies, from the political drama Joint Security Area to the revenge thriller Oldboy to the incredible period piece The Handmaiden.īut Decision to Leave is also a remarkably subtle film, including in ways English viewers may not fully pick up on. Park Chan-wook’s twisty crime drama Decision to Leave is one of the best movies of 2022, and one of the most sophisticated films he’s ever made.
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