Review: Romance, mystery in Korean noir ‘Decision to Leave’

An insomniac detective falls for a beautiful suspect in a suspicious death he’s investigating in “Decision to Leave.” This deceptively simple premise is stretched over two beguiling hours in director Park Chan-wook’s homage to film noir and Alfred Hitchcock. And while this fallen climber might seem like a rather straightforward case, it becomes less so once he gets a glimpse at the dead man’s beautiful widow, Seo-rae, who is Chinese. She laughs at inappropriate moments, which she later explains happens when she’s unsure of her Korean, regularly eats ice cream for dinner and provides home care for grannies, who all love her, during the week. But lest you think the “Oldboy” director has opted for sexless sentiment over shock, know that he still takes a certain amount of pleasure zooming in on the ants crawling over the deceased’s cloudy eye.