No time to kill - Newspaper Kommersant No. 180 (7381) of 09/29/2022

No time to kill - Newspaper Kommersant No. 180 (7381) of 09/29/2022



Park Chan-wook's thriller The Decision to Leave is released, which won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival this year. This is a flawless modern noir that, like in the heyday of this genre, the investigation of the murder becomes a framework for the exploration of love and loneliness. Tells Yulia Shagelman.

“Recently, killings have become rare,” says Hae Joon (Park Hae Il), the youngest police inspector in the Korean city of Busan. He devotes himself entirely to investigating rare murders, even during the endless hours of the night. Their insomniac Hae Jung spends on spying on suspects. On weekends, however, he entrusts this work to a partner (Ko Kyung Pyo), and he himself travels to the city of Ipo, famous for its fogs, where his wife (Lee Jong Hyun) works at a nuclear power plant. She dissects their relationship with clinical dispassion: according to statistics, the absence of sex in marriage leads to more divorces than separation, so it is necessary to “do it” once a week, even if the spouses are in a quarrel. The inspector doesn't mind: he cooks homemade dinners for his wife, mechanically "does it", plays the role of a good husband as flawlessly as the role of an exemplary detective, while as if he is always in a borderline state, characteristic of people who have forgotten when the last once slept.

From this half-asleep, another challenge pulls him out: at the foot of the mountain, the body of Ki Do Soo (Yoo Seung Mok), an employee of the migration service, is found. The matter seems to be clear - the deceased was fond of rock climbing, went to the mountains every week, could not resist on the slope, not for nothing called Maslyany, and crashed. But He-jun bites into the investigation with his usual thoroughness, climbs to the top himself, despite the desperate protests of his partner, who is afraid of heights, examines the belongings of the deceased - everything, down to the last detail, is marked with his initials. Something here does not beat, does not fit into a harmonious picture of an accident or suicide.

His doubts are heightened when the detectives meet the widow Ki Do Soo, whom Hae Joong's colleague at first naively mistakes for his daughter. Chinese immigrant So Re (Tang Wei) takes the news of her husband's death suspiciously calmly and even asks to see photos of his corpse. Everything is obvious to the partner again: well, of course, this beautiful foreigner killed her hateful husband, who beat her and branded her with a tattoo with his initials as a thing. In addition, she left China for a reason: there she faces a life sentence for the murder of her own mother, and after all, as He Zhong likes to repeat, killing a person is like lighting a cigarette, it’s only difficult the first time. No wonder she doesn't cry at all! He Zhong responds to this with a new metaphor, the poetry of which seems to take him by surprise: for some, grief knocks down like a storm wave, for others it spreads slowly, like ink in water.

Likewise, a craving for the deceptively unflappable Seo Rae is creeping up in him. He orders expensive sushi for her directly to the interrogation room, which is becoming more and more like a date, gently teases her mistakes in Korean, watches her at night without looking away, worrying that she only eats ice cream, and mentally being there when the ashes of her forgotten cigarette threaten to fall on the carpet. This attention is mutual: So-Re also begins to watch the inspector, following him on his heels, frankly tells him about his relationship with her husband, mother, even helps with advice in search of the killer, whom he has been chasing unsuccessfully for a long time. Is it a coldly calculated game of cat and mouse or the genuine attraction of two lonely souls finally finding someone who understands them (even if sometimes they have to use an online translator on their phone, and the translation is never one hundred percent accurate) )? Park Chan Wook and co-writer Jung So Kyung masterfully confuse viewers, forcing them to lean towards the first option, then the second, then something in between.

And although they never for a moment forget about the masterfully written detective line, first of all, “The Decision to Quit”, as befits a proper film noir, is a story of fatal attraction, imbued with Hitchcockian suspense and charged with erotic tension, despite underlined chastity. There is not a single sex scene here - Hae Joon and Seo Rae barely touch each other, but every time they get close, breaking the polite distance, sparks flare between them. Like, for example, in the scene where she playfully rummages through the numerous pockets of his custom-made suit. In addition to evidence bags, mints, fragrant hand cream (the Inspector hates the smell of blood), and a lip balm that softens their only two kisses - the first and last - there are eye drops. But they will not help He Zhong: his eyes forever lose their clarity, clouded by longing for the one who again and again decides to leave.



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