Films·Jun 10, 2023

Decision to Leave

A 2022 South Korean romantic mystery film by Park Chan-wook about obsession, grief, and investigation.

Metadata

Director	Park Chan-wook
Year	2022
Writer	Jeong Seo-kyeong, Park Chan-wook
Stars	Tang Wei, Park Hae-il

Summary: Decision to Leave follows a detective investigating the death of a man who falls from a mountain, only to become increasingly drawn to the dead man’s mysterious wife. What begins as a murder investigation slowly turns into a restrained, obsessive romance. The movie keeps shifting between suspicion and longing, making it hard to tell whether the detective is solving the case or losing himself inside it.
Overall theme: At its core, the film is about desire disguised as duty. Park Chan-wook turns the detective story into a study of emotional self-deception: people who think they are being careful, rational, and controlled while quietly unraveling. It is less about whether love is real and more about what love can make people hide, justify, and destroy.
Cinematography style: The cinematography is elegant, precise, and full of visual tricks that make memory, fantasy, and surveillance blur together. Reflections, screens, phones, binoculars, and shifting perspectives create the sense that everyone is watching and being watched. Compared with Park’s more violent films, this one is quieter and more melancholic, using mist, water, mountains, and clean compositions to make obsession feel almost serene.