Little White Lies Issue 95: September/October

Released 21 OCTOBER Invoking the words of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, Seo-rae – the femme fatale at the heart of Park Chanwook’s 11th narrative feature, Decision to Leave – issues a stark warning to Hae-joon (Park Hae-il), the earnest detective investigating her husband’s death during a hike: “Wise people admire the sea. Benevolent people admire the mountains. I am not benevolent.” Despite this cryptic caution – or perhaps owing to it – the steadfast, methodical Hae-joon is beguiled by the beautiful and mysterious Chinese immigrant Seo-rae (Tang Wei). But a question hangs over their dangerous liaison, which Hae-joon is duty-bound to answer: did her husband fall or was he pushed? Park credits a formative viewing of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo with sparking his ambition to make films, and throughout his career he…

Desire is the double-edged panacea for loneliness in the cinema of Korean director Park Chan-wook. It’s seen in Song Kang-ho’s vampire preacher in 2010’s Thirst and the fanciful, battery-eating patients/lovers of 2005’s I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK. It’s also in his new film, Decision to Leave, a measured and masterful romance cut from the same emotionally charged and desire-obsessed cloth as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo – the very film that inspired Park to pick up the camera. Since breaking out internationally with his lauded Vengeance trilogy, Park’s distinctive brand of precisiontooled filmmaking has been marked by its bloody violence and jet black (sometimes very sick) humour. There’s also his love for puzzle-box plotlines that tell of the eternally wronged who are then driven by their own righteous code for some…

The Chinese actor Tang Wei was catapulted to fame when she was selected from a massive casting process to play the lead in Ang Lee’s 2007 erotic period drama, Lust, Caution. The controversy caused by that film led her career down a few unexpected byways, and she triumphantly returns to vanguard of screen acting with her mesmerising role in Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave, where she plays the enigmatic widow and social carer, Seo-rae. LWLies: What was your first encounter with Park Chanwook’s cinema? As a filmmaker who tends to focus on extreme subject matter and extreme emotions, was he always someone who appealed to you as a potential collaborator? Tang: I remember the first time I watched a Park Chan-wook film was in college. During that period, I would…

It’s hard to imagine the clean-cut and kind-faced actor Park Hae-il being cast in a film by Park Chan-wook, whose work is so often populated by grotesques and monsters. And yet, in his role as a detective smitten by a sultry murder suspect (Tang Wei), he brings a new, more coolly existential energy to the director’s often-hystrionic dramas. Do you remember your first experience seeing Oldboy, and what your feelings were about the film? Yes, it definitely stood out from the crowd. There are many great Korean films, but that film is very unique. When I saw it I was shocked and I was in awe. And seeing this great performance by these really well known actors being directed by Park Chan-wook: it was so amazing. It was as if…

The films of Korean writer-director Park Chan-wook are often inextricably linked with rooms as cages, prisons and spaces of physical and psychological torture. He sees the four-walled structure as a way to hide dirty secrets and violent acts, where characters can privately defile the laws of nature, or are left to stew in their own paranoid juices. Perhaps the defining cinematic image of Park’s estimable oeuvre is the urban prison at the beginning of 2003’s Oldboy, in which a hapless salaryman is locked for 15 long years before being forced to uncover the reasons for his incarceration. Rooms in his films signify a cold malevolence, but also serve as vital tools when it comes to the storytelling process. Here, five writers tell the story of five of Park’s most iconic…

There’s nothing we love to do more than impose retrospective reasoning on Quentin Tarantino’s public declarations of love for art. QT named Park Chan-wook’s breakthrough feature JSA as one of the top 20 films made during his career as writer/director, and you don’t have to be a fully-tenured psychology professor to see why. This politically combustible take on Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo details a secret detente between border guards patrolling the DMZ between North and South Korea. Imagine, also, a modern update on the famous no man’s land Christmas football match between British and German troops during World War One, but with focus divided between sentimental brotherhood and the systems of crushing oppression. With its many callbacks to classicera Hollywood, via mystery plotting, well-oiled drama and a set of tragic…