Comparing Park Chan Wook to Alfred Hitchcock is like comparing Oasis to The Beatles. It's a simulation, but if the results are satisfactory, if not a reward, who can complain? Likewise, with Park's beautifully crafted Decision to Leave, an extraordinary neo-noir love story, you can swear you feel Vertigo.
It's as if Parks could draw parallels: obsessive detective, beautiful femme fatale, haute couture thread, waves, acrophobia… We can move on. But what's even more Hitchcockian is Puck's power over his audience. He knows how to seduce and manipulate, pulls with seductive images and dives into a genuine romance that you know from the start isn't going to end well for either side.
Sir, directed by cinematographer Kim Ji Yong, will take you into a drunken dream where eroticism and danger lurk in every dark corner. It's sexy, addictive and not without the occasional gallows humor. It also features the fuel duo Tang Wei and Park Hae Il, who burn like forbidden lovers caught in a web of murder, mystery, and deception. Nothing in Pak's world is to be trusted, not even our allegiance to a mysterious character that seems to change over time.
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Most interesting is So-Rei Tan, a young Chinese refugee who by luck wins the heart of a much older immigration official who wants to show his citizenship papers along with his wedding ring. This is a wonderful father who is found badly mutilated and very dead at the foot of a tall hood in the opening of the hypnotizing film. Is this a case of experienced climbers making a mistake? Or maybe something more sinister?
Busan's youngest and most respected homicide detective must find out. But will Hae Joon Park Hae Lee be able to overcome his chronic insomnia? Your eyes may be blurry, but your other senses are sharp. And they point to So-Rae, a geriatric nurse with a questionable past and lacks empathy for her husband's death. “The living parents came before the dead husband,” he said bluntly to Hae Joon's question.
However, it wasn't her growing guilt that caught the weary audience of the sleep-deprived detective off guard during her round-the-clock surveillance, but her strange and reserved beauty. Jimmy Stewart was fired the same way Kim Novak fired him on The Verge. This is personal and completely ethical. It's bad for him, but it's nice to see Hae Joon fall prey to a whirlwind of lust and desire.
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Below is the standard fare for any film noir lover. But Park and co-creator Jung So Kyung have been able to create a variety of entertainment, some of which are unrelated to Seo Rae, to keep you excited. And that's a good thing, because the stories they create are complex, if not confusing. You risk losing focus and falling into a busy routine that is a magnetic combination of style and habit.
And to double the fun, Park divides the film into two parts, one set in Busan and the other set in Ipoh, where the "broken" Hae Joon wants to move after reluctantly admitting his feelings get in the way of his devotion. Ipo is also home to his sad wife Jeon Ahn (Lee Jong Hyun), who is unaware of her husband's dirty thoughts about Seo Rae. But now that this happy couple is together all the time, things are going to get better, right?
Wrong! It doubles as a story that begins to dive too deep into conjecture and plausible. But this gives Hae Joong another possible murder to solve. And guess who the prime suspect is? What are the chances? You are the same as him. Then the film's attractive graphics become an inseparable part, because the atmosphere always takes precedence over the narrative. Only in the melancholic ending of "Vacation on Vacation" does he fully come back to life.
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The impact is clear, but nothing compared to the fiery spirit of Park's latest film, The Handmaid, 2016. But don't let that discourage you. Because of this offer under Park, it still outperforms most Hollywood thrillers. And that's reason enough to throw it away and let Let Go take over completely.
Rating: not rated
Directed by: Park Chan Wook
Writers: Park Chan Wook and Jung So Kyung.
Cast: Tang Wei, Park Hae Il and Lee Jong Hyun
Duration: 138 minutes
Language: Korean with English subtitles.
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This article originally appeared in Park Chan-wook's Patriot Ledger: The Decision to Quit, a gripping neo-noir love story.
