Cannes 2022: 10 Films We Expect To See
6. Decision To Leave - Park Chan-wook)
A man who lists Franz Kafka, William Shakespeare and Kurt Vonnegut as his filmmaking influences will never be anything but a sure fit for the world's best-known arthouse and prestige film festival, and director Park Chan-wook is all of the above.
Decision To Leave is the director's upcoming Korean-language feature film starring Park Hae-il, from Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder, and Tang Wei, who many will remember from Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, if not for her role then because she was subjected to a Chinese state-ordered media ban for her performance. Decision To Leave is set to tell the story of a detective who falls for the mysterious widow at the centre of his murder investigation, which sounds like a real return to form for Chan-wook, who hasn't released a feature since 2016's The Handmaiden.
No stranger to the Cannes Film Festival, Chan-wook won the Grand Prix (the festival's second-highest honour) for his neo-noir thriller Oldboy in 2004, the Prix de Jury for his semi-erotic horror Thirst in 2009, and was nominated for the Palme d'Or for The Handmaiden.
Decision To Leave was simply not ready in time for Cannes 2021, but now with an additional year on top and the edit rumoured to have been completed late last year, it will come as a great surprise if we don't see it premiere at the festival this year.