This story about “Decision to Leave” and director Park Chan-wook first appeared in the International Film issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
Best known for his action films “Oldboy” and “Lady Vengeance” and the erotic tale “The Handmaiden,” Korean auteur Park Chan-wook is more understated in this slow-burn tale of a police detective who becomes obsessed with a woman he suspects of killing her husband. He did this interview through a translator.
What was the genesis of this story?
It starts from my high school days when I read the novel series on Martin Beck (by Swedish authors Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö). At first I wanted to adapt those novels into a movie. Then I changed my mind and I wanted to adapt a single chapter — but looking back at the story that was written from it, I realized that the story of the chapter is actually not present anymore.
Best known for his action films “Oldboy” and “Lady Vengeance” and the erotic tale “The Handmaiden,” Korean auteur Park Chan-wook is more understated in this slow-burn tale of a police detective who becomes obsessed with a woman he suspects of killing her husband. He did this interview through a translator.
What was the genesis of this story?
It starts from my high school days when I read the novel series on Martin Beck (by Swedish authors Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö). At first I wanted to adapt those novels into a movie. Then I changed my mind and I wanted to adapt a single chapter — but looking back at the story that was written from it, I realized that the story of the chapter is actually not present anymore.
- 12/2/2022
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
Has Park Chan-wook gone soft?
This question may sound radical to anyone familiar with the colorful violence and disturbing sexuality at the center of his work. Start with the “Vengeance Trilogy”: From the multiple suicides in “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” (2002) to the one-man army slaughtering a sea of henchmen in’s “Oldboy” (2003) all the way through a husband raping his wife at the dinner table in “Lady Vengeance” (2005), the South Korean auteur has built his own aesthetic out of dark, visceral material that intensifies his protagonists’ powerful desire to take control of their circumstances.
The same impulse reverberates through his bloody vampire drama “Thirst” and the twisted eroticism of “Stoker.” Even his 2006 romantic comedy “I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Ok” includes a sequence in which an emaciated hospital patient hallucinates about going on a killing spree in the hospital ward.
Yet here comes “Decision to Leave,” a classy,...
This question may sound radical to anyone familiar with the colorful violence and disturbing sexuality at the center of his work. Start with the “Vengeance Trilogy”: From the multiple suicides in “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” (2002) to the one-man army slaughtering a sea of henchmen in’s “Oldboy” (2003) all the way through a husband raping his wife at the dinner table in “Lady Vengeance” (2005), the South Korean auteur has built his own aesthetic out of dark, visceral material that intensifies his protagonists’ powerful desire to take control of their circumstances.
The same impulse reverberates through his bloody vampire drama “Thirst” and the twisted eroticism of “Stoker.” Even his 2006 romantic comedy “I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Ok” includes a sequence in which an emaciated hospital patient hallucinates about going on a killing spree in the hospital ward.
Yet here comes “Decision to Leave,” a classy,...
- 10/13/2022
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Though it features fewer cinematic tricks or surprises than fans of his earlier work might expect, Park Chan-wook finally returns with "Decision to Leave." His first feature in six years is a misty detective romance that prioritizes mood, aesthetics, and the psychology of its characters rather than multilayered plots meant for a quick surprise.
Park Hae-il plays detective Hae-joon, a superstar cop who rose through the ranks at lightning speed, and whose literary hero, fictional Swedish detective Martin Beck, informs his tidy and professional demeanor. Hae-joon never seems unsettled, no matter how gruesome or bleak a case is. On...
The post Decision to Leave Review: Park Chan-wook Directs the Hell Out of a Romantic Mystery [Cannes] appeared first on /Film.
Park Hae-il plays detective Hae-joon, a superstar cop who rose through the ranks at lightning speed, and whose literary hero, fictional Swedish detective Martin Beck, informs his tidy and professional demeanor. Hae-joon never seems unsettled, no matter how gruesome or bleak a case is. On...
The post Decision to Leave Review: Park Chan-wook Directs the Hell Out of a Romantic Mystery [Cannes] appeared first on /Film.
- 5/24/2022
- by Rafael Motamayor
- Slash Film
Park Chan-wook made a big impact in Cannes in 2004 with his lurid revenge drama Oldboy, which took the Grand Prix from Quentin Tarantino’s jury, made a cult star of Choi Min-sik, and alerted audiences everywhere to the perils of eating live sushi. Since then, the director has been a semi-regular fixture at the festival, returning in 2009 with his literary vampire horror Thirst and again in 2016 with The Handmaiden, a delirious, taboo-busting erotic thriller set in 1930s Korea. Director Park’s trademark is not just his fluidity when dealing with genre but his mastery in bending it to his will—and Decision to Leave promises to be yet another stylish, category-defying composition.
Deadline: What is the premise of Decision to Leave?
Park Chan-wook: A detective is dispatched to a scene of death of a man who has fallen from the mountains. There are three possibilities with this case: either he...
Deadline: What is the premise of Decision to Leave?
Park Chan-wook: A detective is dispatched to a scene of death of a man who has fallen from the mountains. There are three possibilities with this case: either he...
- 5/22/2022
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
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