Review | Cannes 2022: Decision to Leave movie review – Tang Wei shines in Park Chan-wook’s twisted love story

Oldboy and The Handmaiden director Park Chan-wook returns with a tale of longing and obsession starring Tang Wei and Park Hae-il

The director’s keen visual eye presents viewers with some startling images throughout, while the finale’s setting is as dramatic as anything he has ever staged

Reading Time:2 minutes

Tang Wei (right) and Park Hae-il in a still from Decision to Leave, directed by Park Chan-wook, which is playing in the main competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

Published: 11:36am, 24 May 2022Updated: 11:50am, 24 May 2022

4/5 stars

Five years since his last film, the erotic tale The Handmaiden, Korean maestro Park Chan-wook returns with Decision to Leave, which finds the director in more melancholic mood as he unfolds a gradual, twisted love story that is playing in the main competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Those who crave the Park of old, from films such as Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy, may be sorely disappointed. But those looking for a complex (albeit sometimes convoluted) story about longing and obsession will be in their element.

Co-written by Park, the film stars Park Hae-il as Hae-joon, a married police inspector working the beat in Busan, South Korea’s second largest city. Early on, a body of a man is discovered at the bottom of a steep mountain, which Hae-joon insists on climbing to retrace the victim’s final steps. Question is, did he fall or was he pushed?

The man’s Chinese wife, Seo-rae (Lust, Caution star Tang Wei), seems almost unconcerned, leading some around Hae-joon to immediately point the finger. “If she’s young, beautiful and foreign, does that make her a murder suspect?” he questions, his interest piqued.

Gradually he falls for this mystery woman, believing her alibi makes her innocent. But there’s much more to come in the story, which switches locales halfway through to the fog-shrouded coastal town of Ipo, moving the action on over a year.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x