Decision To Leave  ★★★★  

ANNUAL Academy Awards nominations are always frustratingly difficult to understand.

For example, one of 2022’s most universally praised films failed to even get a nod in the Best International Feature category.

Who knows why South Korean director Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave was ignored when it’s such a beautifully made, written and acted film.

Chan-wool’s impressive filmography includes Oldboy, Stoker and The Handmaiden.

His latest continues the combination of a slowly twisting narrative and complex characters within beautifully styled and realised locales and settings.

We are in Busan. Park Hae-ill plays veteran police detective Jang Hae-joon who is estranged to a degree from his wife who is working in another city.

A retired immigration officer is found dead at the foot of a mountain he often climbed. His much younger wife, Seo-Rae, an emigrant from China, displays no sorrow when she is told.

She has fresh scrathes on parts of her body and a tattoo of her dead husband’s initials in the manner that he marked his other personal belongings.

Hae-Jun starts to investigate Sept-Rae, interviewing and following her, and slowly becomes infatuated with the woman whose beautiful, reserved and fascinating appearance may be hiding a ruthless femme fatale.

We’ve seen this type of film before, but usually in one of those sexy Hollywood thrillers like Body Heat or Basic Instinct.

The Chinese and French also do them very well but nobody has the exceptional eye for astonishing detail for story, character and visuals that Chan-wook provides.

Hae-ill’s excellence performance is matched by Tang Wei’s as the mysterious Song Seo-rae whose motivations and fate will keep you guessing until the final scenes.

Watched on Apple TV.