Director: Park Chan-wook
Starring: Tang Wei, and Park Hae-il. Also, Lee Jung-hyun, and Go Kyung-pyo
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Runtime: 139 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan

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Rating notes: Mature themes, violence, coarse language and a sex scene

This South Korean mystery romance-thriller tells the story of a detective who is put in charge of a murder investigation in which the woman he falls in love with is the prime suspect.

This subtitled, South Korean film tells the story of a detective, Hae-jun (Park Hae-il), who investigates a woman, Seo-rae (Tang Wei), who is associated with a number of unexpected deaths of people she knows. It won the Best Director Award for Park Chan-wook at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022. The film was also South Korea’s entry for the Best International Feature movie at the 95th Academy Awards in 2022.

The thriller has a definite Hitchcockian flavour to it, which Park Chan-wook makes his own. In the film, Hae-jun, who is in charge of the homicide squad in Bustan, South Korea, falls in love with the mysterious widow of a possible murder victim – an experienced mountain-climber who is found dead at the base of his favourite mountain peak in Bustan. His death was officially recorded as suspicious, and the authorities ask: ‘Did he fall by accident, did he jump, or was he pushed?’ His widow, Seo-rae – a care-giver nurse – comes under suspicion for his murder. At the conclusion of that police investigation, Hae-jun convinces himself that Seo-rae is innocent, but finds himself forced to reassesses his decision, when he finds out that Seo-rae has married again, and her second husband has turned up dead in another set of suspicious circumstances.

The film has a complex plot that refigures itself constantly, and it delivers unexpected twists and surprises that are genuinely puzzling. The movie is about love, regret, and sexual desire. Hae-jun becomes trapped in a web of deception and desire, and there seems no way out. It is an absorbing romance thriller, and Park Chan-wook’s direction delivers emotional punches that keep one guessing until the end. The movie is full of comedy, romance, criminal happenings, regrets, and personal tragedy, as Hae-jun becomes increasingly, irrationally obsessed with Seo-rae.

Director Park Chan-wook has been notably influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 thriller film, Vertigo. Both films have complicated plots that bear some similarity to each other. Vertigo is about a beautiful woman who seduces a private investigator into falling in love with a woman she’s not, only later to fall in love with the detective herself, while he stays besotted with the woman he thought her to be. In this movie, the detective falls in love with a suspected murderer, not knowing exactly who she is, and compulsively becomes fixated with her beauty, elusiveness, and bizarreness of spirit. Obsession and compulsion drive the detective in both films, and passion is intimately intertwined with fixation.

In both films, violence and humour intermix, and suspense is built around multiple surprises as the plotline in each develops to an unexpected and surprising end. While investigating Seo-rae as a murder suspect, for example, Hae-jun obsessively spies on her at night, guiltily aware that he is sexually attracted to her, but Seo-rae likes being stalked and under suspicion.

Throughout the movie, Park Chan-wook forges a delicate balance between threat and vulnerability, while maintaining thriller tension. We are never quite sure about Seo-rae’s intentions. She is dignified, beautiful, reserved and smart, but she leaves a trail of dead people behind her. She is the epitome of the kind of woman, famously featured by Alfred Hitchcock, and depicted so well in movies such as Vertigo – beautiful, clever, aloof, enigmatic, hard to fathom, and seductive.

Park Chan-wook directs expertly with a dark sense of humour, and both Park Hae-il and Tang Wei act especially well. This is a tense mystery movie that delivers multiple, puzzling twists that fuse violence, comedy, tragedy, and romance joltingly together. The film comes to its conclusion with a powerful depiction of the agony of personal loss, in a remarkable series of unforgettable scenes.

Madman Entertainment