The closer you look, the harder you fall.
"Don't speak about our time that way."
— Song Seo-rae to Jang Hae-joon
Decision to Leave (Korean: 헤어질 결심, Resolution to Break Up) is a 2022 South Korean romantic detective drama directed by Park Chan-wook.
An ace detective named Hae-joon (Park Hae-il), an insomniac haunted by his previous cases, is assigned to the death of an immigration officer who fell from a mountaintop. Over the course of the investigation, he falls for the victim's widow, a Chinese woman named Seo-rae (Tang Wei), even though he is married and the force suspects her of pushing her husband.
The film debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival ahead of a theatrical debut in South Korea on June 29, 2022.
Decision to Trope:
- The Alibi: Seo-rae has a solid one. She works as a nurse and can prove that she was taking care of an old lady when her husband died.
- Central Theme: The decision to end a relationship and how it impacts both parties. By the end of the film, nearly every named character is single, whether through break-up or death.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Seo-rae has a very rich backstory full of secrets and difficult past events, that Hae-joon discovers progressively. She can explain all of them.
- Dies Wide Open: Hae-joon keeps many pictures of unsolved cases. Several of them involve people who were found dead with they eyes open, and that looks disturbing.
- Dead Sparks: Hae-joon and Jung-An have a "weekend" marriage, living in separate cities and only spending time together when they're free from work. Even finally choosing to live together doesn't help, as Hae-joon's lying and depressive tendencies push her away.
- Downer Ending: Seo-rae buries herself in the beach and lets the tide bury her, leaving behind a distraught Hae-joon who attempts to find her fail (not knowing she is buried underneath the sand) and whose depression is most likely uncured.
- Femme Fatale: Played with, along with Film Noir. Seo-rae is manipulating Hae-joon to cover her own tracks. But she genuinely falls In Love with the Mark and is devastated when Hae-joon chooses to leave her. By the end of the film, she's so broken by how her manipulations have ruined their relationship, she's Driven to Suicide while desperately hoping her attempt can connect her to Hae-joon again.
- Great Detective: Hae-joon is very good at investigating, and quite efficient at catching criminals. Unlike a Hardboiled Detective he is never cynical (however he is quite hardboiled, as well as Seo-rae). He is also a hard worker, and his insomnia makes him work both day and night.
- The Insomniac: Hae-joon hardly sleeps.
- Language Barrier: Seo-rae speaks Korean quite well, but sometimes she struggles with some word. When she has to say something difficult or important she often speaks Chinese and uses her phone to translate.
- Mercy Kill: As a nurse, Seo-rae has practiced euthanasia before. She has fled her country's justice.
- Not Me This Time: Played with. Hae-joon, knowing that Seo-rae killed her first husband, immediately assumes she killed her second, but Seo-rae insists that she's innocent. It turns out that Husband #2 was a Ponzi schemer and was killed by "Slappy", an investor's son, bent on revenge—but then we learn that while Seo-rae didn't kill her husband she did orchestrate events so that Slappy would kill her husband.
- Oblivious to Love: Hae-joon is entirely devoted to his detective work. As such, he seems incapable of understanding love when it's tied to crime. Until Seo-rae spells it out for him, he doesn't see that one of his suspects commits murder and evades the law out of love for his girlfriend. Hae-joon develops a crush on Seo-rae, but he understandably becomes cold after he finds her guilty of murder. When he lets Seo-rae go free and allows her to destroy evidence, he doesn't realize why she would interpret this as an act of love.
- Poor Communication Kills: The inability for all parties to understand each other does more damage to their lives than anything else. In particular, Hae-joon's refusal to trust Seo-rae in the second half of the film eventually results in her probable suicide.
- Samus Is a Girl: Inverted. Jung-Ah's oft-mentioned coworker June is revealed to be a man, and heavily implied to be building a new relationship with Hae-joon's wife with their new separation.
- Suicide by Sea: Seo-rae digs a hole in the sand of a beach, sits in with a bucket on her head, and waits for the high tide to come.
- Title Drop: When Hae-joon asks Seo-rae why she came to Ipo with her second husband, she says it was because of her "decision to leave" her first husband.
- Wet Blanket Wife: Deconstructed. Jung-Ah is often nagging her husband and seems to spend more time reciting health facts than providing real emotional support. But she displays surprising insight when she cries and admits she thinks Hae-joon thrives around murder cases. Throughout the film, she seems to be fighting an uphill battle against Hae-joon's depression and unwillingness to be honest with her. By the finale, she's lost enough faith in him to believe he might be a murderer, and makes her decision to leave.
