SPOILERS for Decision to Leave ahead.
Examining performances in languages we don’t speak has always fascinated me. There is undeniably something ‘different’ in the experience of studying an actor performing in a ‘foreign’ tongue with subtitles accompanying them in your chosen language, wherever that applies for you (for the record: I speak English, Cantonese, and Mandarin, with everything else falling into this broad ‘foreign’ category for me). I would, however, disagree that anything is ‘lost’ in this process, and I’m not just talking about how subtitles convey the meaning of what is said. I have experimented before with rewatching films in languages I do not speak without subtitles, and have often found myself amazed at how much does still come across with astute direction and acting: notably trying this with Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence and finding myself utterly beguiled and finding new layers to everything Takeshi Kitano did and said, regardless of whether it was in Japanese or the brief spurts of English.
With the right execution, great acting transcends the boundaries of language. With the best performances, delivery will get the emotion through, the physicality will convey multitudes, and the very sensation of ‘getting’ will hit you even before you fully comprehend it. It is something that has greatly interested me through my journey through international cinema, and interrogating this through the lens of communication in film has led me down many routes. Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave hooked me in two-fold with this. Tang Wei who utilises both her native Mandarin, and Korean in her performance, and the way this ties into her character Seo-rae and how she interacts with Park Hae-il’s Hae-jun creates further layers to the film’s beautiful enigmas, revolving around its use of translation and technology. Technology and translation fuse into a thriller that has so many modern touches, slipping in and out of those touches and its more classical airs without needing to define a specific identity through Seo-rae’s language switching.
Watching the film, I had something of an unexpected response to the initial interrogation scenes between police detective Hae-jun and murder suspect Seo-rae (though who’s interrogating who exactly may not be as clear as it seems). As I understand Mandarin and don’t speak Korean, this placed me in a unique third position to Hae-jun, who only speaks Korean, and Seo-rae, who speaks shaky Korean and Mandarin. As I watched Seo-rae switching to Mandarin to get her message across more clearly, having a translation app on her phone to help in the process, I foolishly thought this would help me get ‘ahead’ of the game over Hae-jun, who has to wait for the app to translate in a separate voice, so to speak. Well, not quite, because so much about Decision to Leave is about how something is being said, as much as what is being said.
When Seo-rae speaks in Korean in these scenes, Tang’s performance is tentative, reserved, not quite entirely at ease, yet in her eyes you see glimpses of wheels turning in her head; when she switches to Mandarin to get her words across, she opens up more, and even before the translation app conveys the content of what she has said to Hae-jun, you can feel the connection between the two develop just through the physicality of both Tang and Park’s performances. For Tang, in particular, this is a very intriguing companion piece to her work in Lust, Caution where she was also constantly code switching between languages and demeanours as a mode of survival and self-preservation; Seo-rae, though ostensibly a ‘fatale’ at the start, is also a survivalist as we soon find out more about her troubled history and background.
In an interview with The Playlist, director Park noted that Seo-rae’s particular use of the translation app in situations where she wants to get her message across enables the audience to experience the emotions of her delivery before the cold precise translation of the male voice on the voice app, and ‘the audience comes to the realisation that the meaning of each word is not all there is to a conversation’ and that one must combine the content of the translation to everything about how Seo-rae is communicating her words verbally, physically, emotionally. Her lack of fluency in Korean versus her knowingness creates a fascinating internal dynamic. The deliberate attention placed on the translation app is such a layered addition to these scenes as it allows you to experience Seo-rae’s presence the way Hae-jun is experiencing it. Pretty soon you fall into the same spell, following Seo-rae’s very deliberate technique of imparting the emotions of what she says before the precise meaning. It gives you extra time for every exchange to sink in, where technology and translation allows for a dual transmission of emotions for this hypnotised investigator.
Seo-rae has in effect taken over this interrogation through the translation app, and subsequently the way in which the film makes a very conscious effort to indicate exactly whenever Tang switches between Mandarin and Korean is essential to understanding the brilliance of her performance. Like Tang, Seo-rae is an enigma who is knowingly playing with these language shifts. Her entrancing voice followed by the mechanical electronic voice to translate to an already enraptured Hae-jun, who becomes increasingly obsessed with her. A particularly masterful scene comes in Hae-jun eavesdropping on a seemingly unsuspecting Seo-rae. Tending to her garden and speaking to her cat in Mandarin, she talks glowingly about the ‘good detective’ in such a way that shows she knows exactly who’s sneaking around peeping at her. She knows the tool of the translation app is at hand, that he will consume her voice and expect, and revel in the content of her words. Sometimes she won’t even need the translation app; as she puts the insomniac detective to sleep with a little mysterious traditional technique, the meaning of words are less relevant than the hypnotic way she guides him towards the rest and sleep that has evaded the hardworking detective for so long.
Technology allows Seo-rae to pull Hae-jun under her spell in more ways than one. The use of texting in the film is particularly interesting in this regard. Recent years have seen films such as Another Round and Top Gun: Maverick successfully finding ways to make this mode of communication cinematic; Park Chan-wook pulls this off here too to astonishing effect, in a back-and-forth texting exchange between the two where Hae-jun delete, types, deletes his messages while Seo-rae is typing out hers. A relatable situation for many, no doubt, but also plays off the interrogation room dynamic so well, where Seo-rae was the one struggling to get her words across. The way Hae-jun falls under Seo-rae’s act can almost take you aback with how restrained and organic it feels, and the use of technology amplifies this. See also the way in which the film uses the monitors within the interrogation room or Hae-jun’s binoculars to bring them in close proximity visually even when they are separate. It creates almost a metaphysical space, a John Donne world where their unique mode of communication becomes a language in itself: not just Korean or Mandarin, but something that transcends that.
Much has been made about how erotically charged Decision to Leave is with very little direct physical intimacy between the leads. In fact, the only sex scene in the film is between Hae-jun and his ‘boring’ wife (though frankly, it would be in his best interest to not have such a straying eye – she’s actually rather lovely and wonderfully played by Le Jung-hyun). As he turns his eye to watch a soap opera on television while having ‘routine’ sex with his wife; his mind drawn elsewhere by technology. For a man like this, who needs direct eroticism when just a text message exchange gets him so down bad? The investigation, the voyeurism in itself is the affair. And so whether they’re talking Chinese food or Hae-jun’s obsessiveness with his cases, everything is charged with this eroticism. Who else can make texting, police monitors, all manner of everyday appliances as sexy as Park does with his choice of constantly mind-boggling angles? Making the mundane magical is Park Chan-wook’s mission here and boy does he succeed as he threads the sexual appetite of the modern age of consumption through a plot which hits so many beats of the classical. I’ve got a word for it: timeless.
The struggle to communicate also results in Hae-jun letting down his guard, but interestingly enough, this happens to Seo-rae too. As the investigation of the first half is seemingly resolved and the film segues into a second half, we are presented with Hae-jun, having been emotionally drained of a presumed betrayal by Seo-rae, finding himself emotionally taken in again as they re-encounter one another through a seeming chance encounter. Though the murder case of the first half may have been resolved, Hae-jun still lacks absence of clarity regarding their ‘time together’. The second half of the film undertakes a different investigation of sorts, and I don’t just mean the second murder case that brings Hae-jun and Seo-rae together again, but rather the more internalised, emotional investigation into Seo-rae herself as we get more scenes from her perspective, more insight into her life and thought processes, and culminating in an utterly devastating sequence on the beach where all is revealed, unraveled and unleashed in the titular ‘decision to leave’ of Seo-rae to Hae-jun.
At the New York Film Festival, Park remarked that in terms of making use of modern technology, he wanted to mend this as a juxtaposition with the ‘mythical’ classical elements of the finale on the beach. This duality is retained all the way to this unforgettable final sequence. Seo-rae parallels herself to the phone that Hae-jun implored her to throw away to erase evidence of her crimes, a sacrifice of his reputation and ethics as a ‘good’ cop. She bids farewell to Hae-jun as an enigma, leaving a voice message to him that delivers her final words in Mandarin – ‘The moment you say you loved me, your love is over. The moment your love ends, my love begins’. One could spend all day unpicking the sheer magnitudes of what this means but I’d like to focus on how she is saying her final words in Mandarin. It is not only the content of what she says that is important, but how her speaking Mandarin into the phone for translation emulates their time together investigating, him eavesdropping on her calling him a good detective, the unique way in which they conducted their affair. With her final words, she pays tribute to the intangibles of communication through which these two souls were brought together before she annihilates herself into nothingness.
Reel and Roll Films 