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Decision To Leave at Union South Marquee
February 13 @ 7:30 pm - 10:30 pm
Free
After a long night spent in the interrogation room, Detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) offers Seo-rae (Tang Wei) a toothbrush to clean out some of the sushi they shared together.
Excerpt from Alisyn Amant’s October 2022 review:
Given director Park Chan-wook’s propensity to subvert conventions of the mystery genre throughout his career, however, it makes sense that Decision To Leave follows its predecessors’ sensibilities. That is, murder becomes the least mysterious part about the narrative he spins. Rather, viewers will instead need to shift their focus on figuring out the tortuous tension between detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) and enigmatic widow Seo-rae (Tang Wei).
Through twitches of an eye or subtle movements of an arm, Park Hae-il and Tang’s performances both succeed in saying what their director’s dialogue refuses to say outright, for the sake of making viewers work for the answers. Tang’s performance as the seductive suspect, who happens to be a Chinese immigrant facing intense discrimination and abuse within imbalanced marriages, could have easily become another face to add to the annals of the “conniving but helpless woman” trope. Instead, she molds an intensely emotional character that purposely rubs up against patriarchal power—what law enforcement agencies tend to represent in film and other art forms. When Seo-rae is questioned further about her role in her husband’s death, she essentially and antagonistically asks, “Shouldn’t you be pitying me because I’m a woman?” It shapes the idea that Decision To Leave is not just another cat-and-mouse thriller, but a chilling romance of true equals.
A 25-minute video conversation between Park Chan-wook and fellow South Korean director Bong Joon-ho will also follow this Marquee screening.
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