Decision to Leave

Park Chan-wook supposedly decided to become a director after seeing Alfred Hitchcock's  Vertigo. If that's true, he's now paying off his debt to the master in an incredible way. In his film, which already received the award for best director in Cannes, images from the illustrious British director's thrillers mix with emotions straight from the cinema of Douglas Sirk, and a devastating obsession turns into love – maybe love is becoming an obsession after all. A married policeman meets a young widow whose husband just died in an accident. He has a good life, but soon starts sleeping under her window. He watches tenderly as the woman eats ice cream out of the box alone again instead of preparing dinner. The South Korean director, who in years past showed how much can be accomplished with the desire for revenge and a hammer, calms down. A feeling that makes no sense turns out to be the strongest this time, and a merely fleeting touch causes a tremor. Decision to Leave is perhaps the most beautiful romantic film of the year, about a love that no one noticed and that perhaps wasn't there at all. But if it wasn't there, why does it hurt so much?