Tag Archives: Park Chan-wook

Why ‘Decision to Leave’ deserves the Best Costume Design Oscar

hen it comes to costume design prizes and the Academy Awards, the choice will almost always be between history or fantasy. The Oscar nominations generally favour period pieces, or the odd ‘prestige’ genre movie that’s also found love in other categories – Mad Max: Fury Road or Black Panther, for example.

On very rare occasions where non-fantastical features set in the present enter Oscar conversations for costuming, it’s usually for films where contemporary fashion is explicitly prominent in the story, such as The Devil Wears Prada. Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love, set just a few years before its 2011 nomination, also falls under this umbrella, in following very wealthy characters who can afford runway fashion on the regular.

With this in mind, there’s a far less showy contemporary contender that was overlooked with this year’s nominees, but is no less crucial in reflecting the characters and narrative of the respective film. The tale of a married Busan-based detective getting too close to a suspect under his surveillance, Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave most immediately stands out in costuming terms with the sumptuous outfits worn by Song Seo-rae (Tang Wei), the wife of a murdered man, who’s being interrogated by inspector Jang Hae-joon (Park Hae-il)…

Full feature for Little White Lies

Park Chan-wook on ‘Decision to Leave’

Josh Slater-Williams speaks to Park Chan-wook about Decision to Leave, the latest characteristically genre-slippery film from the great South Korean director of Oldboy (2003), The Handmaiden (2016), Thirst (2009) and many more. The story sees a happily married detective get a little too close to someone under his surveillance: a wife suspected of wrongdoing regarding her husband’s mysterious death in the mountains.

A warning: while director Park doesn’t give away explicit plot spoilers in this interview, he does discuss a tonal shift in the film’s second half and also alludes to one specific scene from that section…

Full interview for Curzon Journal

The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, 2016)

After a polarising foray into English-language filmmaking with 2013’s Stoker, Park Chan-wook returns to his native South Korean cinema for The Handmaiden. The results on display suggest a director rejuvenated. With this period epic of lust, love and (lady) vengeance there’s still all of the off-kilter bombast and blunt force that has characterised his career to date, but with a much more assured control of tone, pitch-black humour and his maximalist stylistic tendencies that makes this a career high…

Full review for The Skinny

Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)

Stoker marks the English language debut of contemporary South Korean cinema poster child Park Chan-wook (OldboyThirst), and the film is full of the striking compositions and sweeping camera movements of his prior acclaimed work. Unfortunately, free of compelling, well-realised material to frame his style around, Stoker sees the director’s worst tendencies in full force; those of garish melodramatics and shallow showiness…

Full review for The Skinny