PMA Films: South Korea's Oscar submission Decision to Leave

PMA Films Specialist Chris Gray dives into our upcoming screenings for December 9-18

Decision to Leave

A winner of Best Director at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and South Korea’s submission for this year’s Best International Film category at the Academy Awards, Decision to Leave is a deliriously inventive thriller made in thrall to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Directed Park Chan-wook, best known for the cult classic Oldboy and 2016’s period psychosexual thriller The Handmaiden, this film finds the director operating at the height of his powers. The labyrinthine plot is propelled by the death of a wealthy man, who appears to have fallen off a mountain while climbing. His wife, Seo-rae (played by the great Tang Wei, of Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution), is called in for questioning and one of the detectives on the case, Hae-joon (Park Hae-il), is concerned that she doesn’t seem overly bothered by her husband’s death. Because of this, he does what so many Hitchcockian protagonists do: he spies on her. Park has tremendous fun with the visual possibilities and metaphors inherent in a relationship that is initially covert but becomes too close for comfort. Decision to Leave is a remarkably fluid film, full of both formal and structural trickery to the point where it’s often difficult to maintain your bearings in the story. This is intentional, a clever mirror to Hae-joon’s increasingly addled psyche, but the film maintains its force thanks to Tang’s outstanding performance. In a year notable for having films that really stick their landings (Aftersun, Tár, The Fabelmans), none may be able to top Decision to Leave’s devastating final moments.

A Couple

The first non-documentary film Frederick Wiseman has made in a generation, A Couple is a striking portrait of Sophie Tolstoy, the wife of War and Peace/Anna Karenina author Leo Tolstoy. The couple were married for 48 years, during which time Sophie had 13 children and is said to have transcribed War and Peace seven times. This is one of the most notable partnerships in literary history. Perhaps it doesn’t feel like a proper subject for Wiseman, who is quite simply the most important American documentarian and a master of filmmaking about how systems operate: communities (Monrovia, Indiana), institutions (At Berkeley), or small businesses (the exquisite Boxing Gym). From the start of A Couple, though, the familiar rhythms of Wiseman’s montage begin. What’s new here is a focus on one single subject, but Wiseman is still concerned with a relationship that can only function with the involvement of more than one person. Sophie, portrayed by Nathalie Boutefeu (who also co-wrote the film), is brought to life through her diary entries and letters to her husband. These monologues are delivered both straight to camera and to the trees and waves as she wanders the French island of Belle Ile. Sophie’s words are plaintive and frank, the reasonable pleas, complaints, and passions of a woman who knows she has settled in with a tempestuous genius known around the world. Boutefeu’s performance is beautifully calibrated, guiding us through years of joy and sorrow in Wiseman’s compact but precise film.

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