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South Korean auteur behind 'Oldboy' returns with 'pure' love story
Filmmaker Park Chan-wook, known for his ultra-violent thrillers that helped catapult South Korean cinema onto the global stage, is back with a different work -- a love story.
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In this file picture taken on May 28, 2022, South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-Wook delivers a speech on stage after he won the Best Director prize for the film 'Decision to Leave (Heojil Kyolshim)' during the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France. (AFP/Valery Hache)
F
ilmmaker Park Chan-wook, known for his ultra-violent thrillers that helped catapult South Korean cinema onto the global stage, is back with an altogether different work -- a restrained yet deeply emotional love story.
Decision to Leave arrives after the world-smashing success of South Korean entertainment, including Bong Joon-ho's Parasite and Netflix's Squid Game, and has been the top-grossing domestic film in South Korea since opening last week.
It stars Chinese star Tang Wei and Korean actor Park Hae-il, who plays a detective investigating a man's fatal plunge from a mountain. He falls for the victim's mysterious wife, whom he suspects of being behind her husband's death.
The film has already won Park the Best Director prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which had previously awarded him the Grand Prix for his 2003 cult-classic revenge thriller Oldboy.
However, unlike many of his previous works, Decision to Leave contains almost no adult or graphically violent scenes.
IndieWire has called it "the most romantic movie of the year (so far)", while early reviews praised it as a gorgeously rendered love story marked by elegance and restraint.
"I agree that it's a romantic film, and I wanted to make such a movie," Park said in an interview with reporters in Seoul last month.
