Here’s a sentence I never expected to write: The most romantic movie of the year (so far) is a police procedural. Then again, I wasn’t aware that “Oldboy” director Park Chan-wook — whose operatic revenge melodramas have given way to a series of ravishingly baroque Hitchcockian love stories about the various “perversities” that might bind two wayward souls together — was making a detective thriller. In that case, the heart-stirring potential of the Korean auteur’s new detective saga would have been as obvious as the identity of its killer.

It’s a good thing, then, that “Decision to Leave” isn’t a whodunnit — as you’ll be able to discern from the pathetic effort its protagonist makes to solve his latest case.…

To others I am green like the mountains, to you I am simply blue. Our first meal together was fish, our first word together was "waterproof" (adjective: impenetrable by water), together we are the ocean. We both come from the mountains, our origin is the mist, like turtles, our destination is the sea. There we will gather and bury our secret, somewhere deep and can not be reached, our secret is our love, yes, us, we, ours -- a love that is shattered (noun: ruined or broken) because my love started when yours has ended. If I can't share my sleep with you, I will at least make myself the cause of your insomnia, if our breaths can not synchronize,…

Way funnier than I was expecting, in part because it takes its noir femme-fatale gf/Hitchcockian obsessed-man bf dynamic completely emotionally seriously but in order to sustain it on a narrative level has to keep having its characters make increasingly ridiculous decisions. The best part is easily the editing which latches itself subjectively into the intense fixations and headspace of the tormented insomniac at its center and as a result basically moves at the confused, unhinged rapid pace of his mind including jolting jump cuts, wipe transitions, screen overlays, digital zooms, and crossfades. 

It's borderline hallucinatory slapstick at times but in a deliberately energetic, exciting way that gets you swept up in the yearning these two have to preserve their perverse…