<em>Decision to Leave</em> Is This Century’s First Great Erotic Thriller
About halfway into Park Chan-wook’s new film, Decision to Leave, a woman reaches into a man’s pocket to find a stick of lip balm. The two of them are alone, visiting a temple amid a downpour. She silently removes the cap, rolls the wheel to expose the tube, and applies it onto his chapped lips. He’s shocked at first, almost reluctant, but she smears away with quick, confident strokes. Then she smiles, as if to say, There. That’s better.
It’s the sexiest scene I’ve watched this year—and I’ve seen plenty of sexy scenes in the past several months, thanks to Hollywood’s naked attempts to revive the erotic thriller, a bygone genre that dominated the box office in the 1980s, studying films such as and . Adrian Lyne, the maestro of those titles, admirably returned to sultry filmmaking himself with in March. Even made a comeback, albeit on the small screen.
