A new film by one-of-a-kind Korean director Park Chan-wook is guaranteed to make a splash, but some viewers may find themselves in water over their heads in this deconstructed police procedural-cum-romance that visualizes thoughts and feelings and makes a deliberate salad of the editing. International Asian stars Tang Wei as a murder suspect and Park Hae-il as the detective who’s after her (in more senses than one) have a sparkling chemistry on screen that should persuade game audiences to follow their story of love, betrayal and self-sacrifice, even as the narrative comes in and out of focus on the level of sheer comprehensibility. The end result is a riotous, visually haunting, sometimes frustrating or bemusing outpouring of pure cinema that will either sweep audiences away or send them heading for the door. Its bow in Cannes competition should be a litmus test to see how well it will play at the art house.
Park Chan-wook, best known for celebrated and unconventional films like the thriller Oldboy (Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004) and the erotic period piece The Handmaiden (Cannes 2016), comes on full force in his first police movie, confident he can push the popular genre to the limits and beat it. Of course this TV staple has already been around the block at the cinema in various guises, and it has often blossomed into visual poetry in Asia. Here Kim Ji-yong’s cinematography shifts the genre into a brooding, turbulent whirlpool of emotions as the action moves from Busan, where Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) heads a team of young detectives, to a misty small city on the coast where his wife lives and where he eventually moves. Early in the film, their “weekend marriage” is a source of tension, with Hae-Joon doggedly insisting on keeping an apartment in Busan for the sake of his work. His vivacious wife, who works in a nuclear power plant, is amusingly into new age herbal remedies, but so far has failed to cure his chronic insomnia. Insomnia is, in fact, a code word for something much deeper than ails him and that is related to the unsolved cases that haunt his living room wall, gruesome police photos hidden out of sight behind a curtain.
As the film opens, the homicide squad is hot on the track of two tough guys wanted for murder. Their primary role is to intersperse the main narrative with colorful foot chases up and down steep staircases and over rooftops — as though there was a need for more storytelling in a film over two hours long. They do tie in thematically, however, as the murder they’re wanted for is a crime of passion by one of the criminals who is obsessed with a woman. This will soon be Hae-joon’s nightmare.
An experienced 60-year-old climber has been found dead at the foot of a mountain. Immediately the film’s pace picks up as an avalanche of information and clues appear. The dead man’s wife is a Chinese immigrant, Seo-rae (Tang Wei), an attractive young woman who “stands straight” and says what she thinks. She doesn’t seem overly upset by widowhood, and she has fingernail scratches all over her body as well as rough hands. While interrogating her, the normally frugal Hae-joon finds himself so drawn to her that he orders an expensive sushi box for their lunch in the police station, a scene so patently tied to local culture (including cleaning up the desk afterwards) it offers a relaxing pause in the action. But in addition to being tidy and thorough, he is also dutiful: he puts her on the suspect list and orders her put under surveillance. So in the end he spends his sleepless nights parked in front of her apartment building, observing her and convincing himself she’s innocent. After all, her husband has left a suicide note behind and had reasons for carrying it out.
Tang Wei, who first attracted attention in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution followed by Late Autumn and The Golden Era, proves an adept if unusual femme fatale in her incarnation as a Chinese caregiver for the elderly. Her simplicity is what attract the detective, played with lots of moral scruples by Park Hae-il from Memories of Murder and The Host. Too bad for fans of the amusingly erotic Handmaiden, but here the sex scenes are completely foregone, with all the heat generated by the protags venting in a single kiss late in the film. This is after a very significant plot twist fills the soundtrack with the notes of yearning, tragic loss and desolation in Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Above all, Hae-joon is racked by a shattering sense of betrayal, and the story feels like it’s over.
No. After a wild Tarantino-like interval in which a new gangster, Slappy, appears violently beating up a woman (he has emotional issues with his mother and her husband), the scene shifts back to Hae-joon, who is now living with his wife in the small city with a nuclear plant and a raging, dramatic coastline. He is the head of a tiny police station where nothing ever happens – until a man is found stabbed to death in his swimming pool. This sets the stage for the film’s second act, an emotional reckoning next to which Mahler sounds like small potatoes. As Hae-joon’s wife observes in disgust, “only violence and murder make you happy,” and of course that goes for the audience, too. But there’s also Seo-rae on his mind, and their reunion occurs in a brilliant scene that illustrates the dangerous unavoidability of human attraction.
Contributing to the underlying constants of mayhem and anxiety is the heartbeat rhythm of Cho Young-wuk’s propulsive music. Production design by Ryu Seong-hie, with dark, noir-ish interiors contrasting with the rational spaces of the police station, provides a fragile human backdrop, which the potent natural world of huge rocks and mountains and cliffs and sea is ready to wipe out in an instant of passion.
Director, producer: Park Chan-wook
Screenplay: Park Chan-wook, Chung Seo-kyung
Cast: Tang Wei, Park Hae-il
Executive producers: Miky Lee, Kang Ho-sun
Cinematography: Kim Ji-yong
Editing: Kim Sang-bum
Production design: Ryu Seong-hie
Costume design: Kwak Jung-ae
Music: Cho Young-wuk
Sound: Kim Suk-won
Production company: Moho Film (S. Korea)
World Sales: CJ ENM
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
In Korean, Chinese
138 minutes
