Decision to Leave: the brilliance of the mirror scene, which drives moviegoers crazy!

Park Chan-Wook plays with focal lengths to confuse the viewer. And it works. An idea which is deciphered in detail in the bonuses of this dark and romantic film.

Seasoned detective Hae-Joon investigates the suspicious death of a man on a mountaintop. Soon, he begins to suspect Sore, the deceased's wife, while being destabilized by his attraction to her.

Park Chan-Wook did not steal his directing prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival for Decision to Leave. By releasing it on DVD and Blu-ray, SND was perfectly aware of this: the French distributor was banking heavily on this aspect of the film, with captivating decryptions. Here we share a focus on one of its key scenes, on the occasion of its first broadcast on Arte. It will be late: meet at 10:35 p.m. to see it live, after Two men in the citythe thriller worn by Jean Gabin and Alain Delon. But Decision to Leave is already available in replayfor free on the channel's website.

Among the bonuses, there is first of all an analysis by Philippe Rouyer (journalist at Positif and Cercle de Canal +, among others) entitled “Between land and sea: The cinema of Park Chan-Wook”then via a making-of of this fascinating work, which borrows as much from noir as from romantic films. These videos focus in particular on a scene which amazed the spectators on the Croisette, and which has continued to make noise ever since: that of the interrogation of Sore (Tang Wei) by Hae-Joon (Park Hae-il), at during which the filmmaker never stops playing with focal lengths to film an exchange “impossible”. How can he at the same time show her blurry in the foreground, and focus on her reflection, while filming the opposite with the detective?

Decision to leave: a captivating love thriller [critique]

Rouyer deciphers this brilliant idea, which helps illustrate one of the concepts at the heart of the film: telling a love story that plays out in two stages, where the two protagonists are in love with each other in a time-staggered way. When he follows her, he manages to mentally transpose himself alongside her, but when she is actually in the same room as him, a distance irremediably creates between them. Not only because of the language barrier (as she is of Chinese origin, she sometimes uses the wrong words and is clumsy in the way she tells her story), but also physically. A concept perfectly rendered visually here, while respecting the mojo that the filmmaker kept repeating during the conception of this film: “We had to tell this story with subtlety and grace.”

Thanks to the making-of, we better understand how this play of reflections was designed, using a rotating camera, a piece of mirror and a blue background. The fact of having shot the film digitally obviously helps to design this type of “cheated”which the brain immediately analyzes as “impossible” and which will thus leave a lasting impression on our retina. Rouyer analyzes as follows:

“Their conversation is not smooth, since her response will be delayed (because she sometimes has to use voice translation software, editor’s note). This deferred side, this distance side, is also found in the image. Park Chan-Wook had the fantastic idea of ​​playing with the focal lengths, sometimes blurring, sometimes sharp, on the characters, so that within the same shot, he can focus on her or on him alternately. Rather than doing a shot/reverse shot (we frame him, then we frame her and we create a ping-pong between them), we keep a shot, and within this same shot, we blur /net. A very characteristic example of this is the interrogation scene (…) As they speak in front of a mirror without complexion, it is as if they were doing a split-screen: a reflection of one with a piece of the other. The image is fragmented, we play on the frames inside the frame. Both are in the frame: in cinema, when we do that, it's a way of bringing them together: emotionally, symbolically… But he, within this same image, shifts them, he separates them. And basically, the film is about that.”

Park Chan-Wook's brilliant direction obviously doesn't stop there, his transitions between two scenes of Decision to Leave being particularly well thought out, fluid and striking for the public. They too were thought of from the beginning of the project, during the creation of its very detailed concept arts, to achieve this kind of precision. This is obviously not the first time that Park Chan-Wook has done this: in Misshe was already constructing his staging according to his subject, and in Old Boyhe amazed the public with his action scene phenomenal in a sequence shot, in a corridor. An idea that has become so cult that it has inspired numerous copies since.

Here is the trailer for Decision to Leave :

Park Chan-wook: “I am often told that I am a stylist, I take it a little badly”