Romance, mystery in ‘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. It lulls the viewer, along with the protagonist, into a misty, dreamlike delirium until you’re not even certain of what’s right in front of your face.

Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) is the detective in question, an elegant, stoic sort who works cases in Busan during the week and spends free weekends with his wife Yoo Mi-ji (Jung Yi-seo), who lives hours away in Ipo. Even his weekend trips home don’t always happen - people don’t stop murdering because it’s the weekend, he explains, but for now the arrangement seems to suit both. He doesn’t sleep anyway, so he might as well spend his many, many awake hours in the car.

But his world is soon to be upended by a new case involving a skilled climber who has been found dead at the bottom of a very peculiar mountain that looks like a very tall, narrow mushroom. 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 (Tang Wei), who is Chinese. Hae-joon is immediately smitten.

Seo-rae is neither innocent victim nor straightforward femme fatale. She doesn’t seem remotely upset that her husband, who is much older and who abused and branded her, is dead. She even wants to look at the pictures from the crime scene. 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.

And Hae-joon can’t get enough of her either. He stakes out her apartment at night. He watches her at work with the grannies. And they have what might be considered a very strange “date” too, in an interrogation room in the police station with others watching through the one-way glass. The expensive takeout sushi they consume is filmed so lovingly you half expect it to have its own credit at the end. But it’s clear that Hae-joon, who has just instructed his colleague to not spend too much on his own lunch, is making some very peculiar decisions for such a well-respected, methodical detective.

Seo-rae also knows she’s being watched and seems to almost like it. Is this romantic? Manipulative? Well, that may depend on the individual viewer, but it is intoxicating in its own way.

Manipulative

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. It’s the first of many nods to obscured vision, from the mists snaking around the roads in Ipo to a pivotal conversation atop a mountain in which one person is wearing a headlamp. And there is a fair amount of humor too, in imperfect text conversations and lost in translation confusions, as well as from Hae-joon’s various professional partners, who seem to be in their own workplace comedy.

At times, the intricacies of the plot feel almost sadistically confusing - especially after the case is “solved” and the film transitions into a different phase. It almost demands a second viewing just to parse everything we come to learn about

Seo-rae, as well as all the cinematic references from “Vertigo” to Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye.”

But the mystery of the murder is not really the point, is it? This is about an obsession that’s both all-encompassing and impossible to rationalize that simply leaves everyone adrift and searching for eternity.

“Decision to Leave,” a MUBI film in limited theatrical release Friday, has not been rated by the Motion Picture Association, but contains adult themes and some disturbing images of dead bodies. Running time: 138 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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NEW YORK: Minka Kelly wants her fans to know that her life is not just a story of success.

The actor and model known for “Friday Night Lights,” “Titans” and “Euphoria” among other shows is working on a book that publisher Henry Holt and Company calls “a gripping memoir of family, forgiveness, and the importance of finding inner strength.” Holt announced Wednesday that “Tell Me Everything” is scheduled to come out May 2.

According to Holt, the 42-year-old Kelly “will speak openly about her upbringing as the daughter of a single mother” and “the cycles of violence and hardship inherited by the women around her.” In a statement issued through her publisher, Kelly called the book a tribute to her mother and to all working-class single mothers.

“I had to ask myself, can I actually be brave enough to be seen as I am, or am I more comfortable fulfilling everyone else’s idea of who I should be?’” she said. “The desire to tell my story on my own terms felt important.” (AP)

while also handling Nashville recording sessions. (AP)

BOSTON: A tender and touching letter that author John Steinbeck penned to his teenage son, offering fatherly advice after the young man confided that he was in love for the first time, is going up for auction.

Boston-based RR Auction says the handwritten draft of a letter to his eldest son, Thomas — then 14 — shows the “Of Mice and Men” author’s empathy: He refused to dismiss it as puppy love.

“While this letter offers an intimate, private glimpse into Steinbeck’s family life, it also expresses his ideas about love with profundity and eloquence,” said Bobby Livingston, executive vice president of the auction house.

In the two-page letter, dated Nov. 10, 1958, the Nobel Literature Prize laureate told his son: “If you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.”

Steinbeck, who won a Pulitzer for “The Grapes of Wrath” in 1940 and the Nobel in 1962 for a body of acclaimed work, showed he was no stranger to matters of the heart. (AP)