[Here is Cannes] Park Chan-wook "Love is an Unsolved Beautiful Mystery" [Interview]

75th Cannes Film Festival Scene
Meeting Director Park Chan-wook in Cannes
What Kind of Movie Is 'Decision to Leave'

[Cannes (France) = Asia Economy Reporter Lee Isul] Decision to Leave gracefully navigates the contemplation of love, moving elegantly between emotions and the bridges that connect them. It seems the filmmaker must be experiencing an exhilarating 'love' themselves.

At a press conference held on the morning of the 24th (local time) at the Palais des Festivals Press Center, a question was posed: "You expressed a love story in a rather unfamiliar way. What does director Park Chan-wook think love is?"

Several reporters applauded in agreement. Director Park Chan-wook said, "I am not the type of director who uses personal life or subjects in my films," adding, "I don't know how much of what I think is reflected in the film, but it’s just a story that writer Jeong Seo-kyung and I made up while sitting in a cafe," wiping under his nose as he spoke.

"Love is one of many relationships that well shows what it means to be human. It is a type of relationship that can reveal what the human species is."

Decision to Leave is a Korean film presented by director Park Chan-wook after six years, invited to compete in the 75th Cannes Film Festival competition section, and was screened on the 23rd (local time) at the Lumi?re Theater. Following Oldboy, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2004, Thirst, which won the Jury Prize in 2009, and The Handmaiden, invited to the competition section in 2016, this is his fourth entry into the competition.

The film speaks of love through the relationship between a detective and a suspect. Scenes of questioning and answering dominate. The detective interrogates the suspect, and sometimes the suspect questions the detective. The situation is observed from outside by a camera. Subtle nuances pass between them. Director Park Chan-wook emphasized this as the most important feature of the film.

"Kind acts like giving a toothbrush after eating together to brush teeth and tidy up. Secretly hiding and peeking. This is justified as the detective monitoring the suspect, but in a way, it’s stalking. Seo-rae (played by Tang Wei) feels not discomfort but rather as if someone is watching over her all night. They meet, develop affection, fall for each other, then seduce and reject seduction. All these become love."

While Park Chan-wook’s previous films contained intense violence or explicit love scenes, Decision to Leave has none. It’s as if he has decided to part ways with high-intensity scenes. The film is gentle, as if in love.

"After the premiere screening, I met with overseas distributors, and they said they would promote the film as 'Park Chan-wook’s evolved world.' I said, 'That can’t be. People will expect more evolved violence and sex.' (laughs)"

"I didn’t include those scenes because I thought they were unnecessary for the film, but when I said I was making a melodrama, people around me asked if there would be intense sex scenes. Ah, so that’s the expectation. Then I thought I should go the opposite way."

After the press conference, at a hotel in Cannes, when asked about the definition of love, director Park Chan-wook replied as the film suggests: why must love remain an unsolved case? He said, "Resolved love, completed love might not be true love. Isn’t love an unsolved mystery, a mystery that ultimately remains unsolved? That tension is the most beautiful."

When asked why he returned to melodrama, director Park Chan-wook said, "No matter how much I say it, people take it as a joke, but I am a rom-com (romantic comedy) director."

"I wanted audiences from various countries, even 10 or 20 years from now, to feel without discomfort that the complex changes in relationships between people are the same. To evoke emotions that anyone human, anyone adult, has experienced. I hope it resonates in a form that invites voluntary, active savoring without provocative elements."

Cannes (France) = Reporter Lee Isul