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
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 marks the English language debut of contemporary South Korean cinema poster child Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Thirst), 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
Writing by Josh Slater-Williams
Read Write Hand 