Park Chan-Wook’s ‘Decision To Leave’ Marks MUBI’s Move From Niche Service To Streaming’s International Arthouse

As each new streaming channel elbows their way into the mainstream, the quest for industry legitimacy arrives at a decisive, defining moment that proves they’re a serious player around to stay. Netflix got theirs at the Cannes Film Festival five years ago, when their Okja earned director Bong Joon-ho a mix of boos (mostly from the anti-Netflix contingent of an international press corps understandably defensive of the theatrical experience) and standing ovations. Apple’s release of CODA didn’t look like a big splash-maker until it snuck away with the Academy Award for Best Picture months after the quiet streaming debut. And now the arthouse-minded upstart MUBI has come to this crucial juncture back at Cannes, where they’re unveiling a major work from a major artist, Park Chan-wook’s hotly anticipated noir homage Decision to Leave.

Once a niche service offering thirty movies at a time, a new title uploaded each day to push off the oldest and create a more purposeful viewing program than the infinite sprawl of a content library, the streaming service is now announcing itself as a major force in global distribution. Over the past year or so, the London-based company has rapidly staffed up and expanded its offerings, keeping the ‘Film of the Day’ rotation of thirty alongside a permanent collection spanning contemporary obscurities as well as world classics from Tarkovsky, Truffaut, and other highbrow heavy-hitters. What’s more, they’ve gotten in the business of bringing their favorites to the public with a releasing arm that’s already landed such under-the-radar gems as Bertrand Bonello’s Zombi Child and Xavier Dolan’s Matthias and Maxime. They’ve launched a publication of criticism called Notebook, tested the waters of brick-and-mortar ticketing systems akin to MoviePass, and beefed up the site’s interface with member-generated lists, user reviews, and excerpts from professional coverage. For cinephiles, there aren’t many better uses of eleven dollars.

Next stop: world domination. Last year, MUBI laid claim to the lion’s share of 2021’s most acclaimed films for theatrical runs in the UK and other smaller-market territories, including [deep breath] Annette, First Cow, Benedetta, Titane, The Worst Person in the World, Drive My Car, Memoria, and Bergman Island, to name only a handful. Their sights are now set on the uppermost circuit that is American viewership, and Decision to Leave has emerged as their prize racehorse. South Korea’s Park Chan-wook sits in the uppermost tier of filmmakers primarily working outside the English language (that’s discounting Stoker and his series The Little Drummer Girl), and the news of his first new feature in six years automatically bestows a position of import on MUBI. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the movie in question is excellent.

Decision to Leave finds the inveterate weirdo Park shifting into something closer to normalcy, though that still leaves space for, say, some physical comedy involving a finger-biting CGI soft-shelled turtle. The batty sense of humor allowing for a character named “Slappy” (he loves slapping people) is just one of the sui generis elements distinguishing a detective story that largely plays by the genre rulebook, enlivened by traces of Park-style idiosyncrasy not totally incongruous to the down-the-middle narrative model adopted here. The beat cop Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) travels to a wind-swept mountaintop village for a murder investigation and quickly falls for the dead guy’s widow Seo-rae (Tang Wei), cuing up a mind-game of obsession and manipulation. Vertigo connections abound as we race alongside Hae-jun to suss out whether this woman is a damsel in distress or a femme fatale, though the eventual denouement comes in pretzeled twists that complicate the good-evil duality.

The material itself is nothing revolutionary, but the pleasure lies in the fun Park has along the way. He and editor Kim Sang-bum indulge in unorthodox, at times disorienting cutting schemes that distort the present-tense understanding of the many flashbacks, whipping us back and forth through the past with sly match cuts. To that effect, he’s as effective a constructor of striking images as he’s ever been, whether it’s the casually staggering scale of a wide shot honing in on a mountain summit or the innovative methods he contrives to show smart-tech interfaces. The use of watches and phones enabled with recording devices adds layers of intrigue to Hae-jun’s sleuthing as he tries to reconstruct the timeline of crime, and what’s more, the POV shots from inside the screens enrich and vary Kim Ji-yong’s restless cinematography. Park and Kim clearly gets their kicks testing where they can put the camera, at one point submerging the lens inside the head of a dead red snapper to redefine the Film School 101 vocab of “fisheye shot.”

The film hits its stride in the second half, as Hae-jun comes to accept that he’s seen the truth about Seo-rae in front of his face the whole time, and wonders whether he even cares. Park’s sharpest writing concerns the intricacies of denial, how an intensely unfulfilled person (it bears mentioning that Hae-jun already has a wife, he just doesn’t feel all that strongly about her) will believe anything they have to if it brings them closer to the thing they’re convinced will make them happy. It becomes increasingly difficult for Hae-jun to deny that he’s getting played like a cheap ukulele, and yet he can’t bring himself to reject the flimsy alibis Seo-rae presents to him, her innocence just plausible enough for him to desperately latch onto. Is a tragic noir hero still a sucker if he wants to be a sucker?

Park diehards may be disappointed to find his latest work bereft of the horny robots, cross-dressing lesbians, or incest-tinged homicide typifying his more out-there output. But perhaps it’s for the best that he’s calmed down and grown slightly more accessible, at least for MUBI’s sake, as they prepare for their widest theatrical rollout yet. They’re geared up to re-introduce Park to a whole new slice of the moveigoing population, and in doing so, re-introduce themselves as well.

Decision To Leave is scheduled to land on MUBI in Fall of 2022.

Charles Bramesco (@intothecrevassse) is a film and television critic living in Brooklyn. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Newsweek, Nylon, Vulture, The A.V. Club, Vox, and plenty of other semi-reputable publications. His favorite film is Boogie Nights.