After six years, Park Chan-wook returns with the trailer for Decision To Leave

The director’s first feature-length film since 2016's The Handmaiden premieres at Cannes

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  May 9, 2022 | 10:21pm
Aux News Park Chan-wook
After six years, Park Chan-wook returns with the trailer for Decision To Leave
Decision To Leave Screenshot: Mubi

It’s been a rough couple of years for everybody. While we can go around blaming our problems on conspiracy theorists, social media, and climate change for the worst of it, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that things really started slipping in 2016, when, coincidentally or not, Park Chan-Wook released his last film, The Handmaiden. Now we’re not saying that the lack of Park Chan-Wook at the movies set us on a collision course, but it certainly didn’t help.

Thankfully, happy times are here again. Park Chan-wook, the director of Oldboy and Stoker, has a new movie, and boy, does it look beautiful and mysterious. There isn’t much in the way of plot in the trailer—in fact, it’s kind of unclear what kind of movie this is. Yup, Park is back. Given his previous work, whatever movie you think you’re watching will probably be upended repeatedly throughout its runtime.

Decision To Leave follows a detective played by The Host’s Park Hae-il investigating the death of a man who fell off a mountain. Really. Along the way, he meets the deceased’s mysterious wife Seo-rae (played by Lust, Caution’s Tang Wei). She complicates things through a little thing we call love, we assume.

Of course, as is the case with Park’s work, the investigation verges on the fantastic, with beautiful, otherworldly locations and our heroes asking things like “what kind of time is this?” God, this movie cannot get here soon enough. Luckily, we won’t have to wait much longer. Per Deadline, the movie will play in competition at Cannes this year and has already been picked up by Mubi for streaming and theatrical release this fall.

Park’s last project was the Israeli-spy epic Little Drummer Girl for AMC. Based on the John le Carré novel of the same name, the six-episode miniseries starred Florence Pugh, Alexander Skarsgård, and Michael Shannon.

 
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