MUBI at Fantastic Fest 2022: Park Chan-wook's DECISION TO LEAVE and Léa Mysius' THE FIVE DEVILS

DECISION TO LEAVE

Directed by Park Chan-wook (Old Boy, The Handmaiden) Starring Tang Wei (Lust, Caution), Park Hae-il (The Host)

What happens when an object of suspicion becomes a case of obsession? Winner of Best Director at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) returns with a seductive romantic thriller that takes his renowned stylistic flair to dizzying new heights. From a mountain peak in South Korea, a man plummets to his death. Did he jump, or was he pushed? When detective Hae-joon (Park Hae-il, The Host) arrives on the scene, he begins to suspect the dead man’s wife Seo-rae (Tang Wei, Lust, Caution) may know more than she initially lets on. But as he digs deeper into the investigation, Hae-joon finds himself trapped in a web of deception and desire, proving that the darkest mysteries lurk inside the human heart. With nods toward classic Hollywood and Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Decision to Leave is an essential masterwork from the legendary Park Chan-wook, infused with elegance, ingenuity and a knife-edge precision that truly cannot be matched.

THE FIVE DEVILS Directed by Léa Mysius (Ava) Starring Adèle Exarchopoulos (Blue Is The Warmest Person)

Vicky (newcomer Sally Dramé), a strange and solitary little girl, has a magical gift: she can reproduce any scent she finds, which she bottles in an assortment of carefully labeled jars. One of those scents belongs to her mother, Joanne (Palme d'Or-winner Adèle Exarchopoulos), to whom Vicky feels an almost obsessive attachment. When the sudden reappearance of her father’s sister, Julia (Swala Emati), upends their conservative Alpine village and threatens the family's sense of domestic bliss, Vicky finds that by reproducing her aunt’s smell, she can traverse a series of increasingly dark and archaic memories that reveal the secrets of her village, her family, and her own existence.

Director Léa Mysius’s first feature, Ava, premiered at Cannes in the Critics' Week section in 2017. She is also a co-screenwriter of Claire Denis’s The Stars at Noon, receiving its World Premiere in the Main Competition section at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Mysius’ screenwriting work includes collaborations with Arnaud Desplechin (Oh Mercy! andIsmael’s Ghosts), Jacques Audiard (Paris, 13th District), and André Téchiné (Farewell to the Night).