Review: Park Chan-wook's thrilling mystery 'Decision to Leave' is noir at its most nourishing

At first glance — and it rewards several glances — "Decision to Leave" seems to tell the story of a police detective and the beautiful woman who upends his dull, well-ordered existence. It's a tale of impossible longing, the kind that can undo a marriage, ruin a career and send ordinary people spiraling into an all-consuming obsession.

But given the formalist bent and sensualist fixations of the South Korean writer-director Park Chan-wook, you might say this double-decker feast of a thriller is also about a few other things: the lingering scent of skin lotion, the hypnotically repetitive patterns of wallpaper and the glistening sheen on a piece of sushi, even under the hard glare of police-station lighting. Park has a thing for beautiful surfaces and also