Persona

'Persona' is an anthology of four histories dealing with love, revenge and death. These are stand-alone episodes and they deserve to be rated in that way. But now I'm judging the product ('Persona') as one entire piece.

I would not like to call any form of art as a waste of time, but 'Persona' began like this to me. 'Love set' was not anything else than a 15-minute tennis match despite the good acting and the image composition. I almost stop watching the following chapters.

Fortunately, I continued. The three following histories are well scripted, well portrayed. And they are not superficial like the first one. 'Kiss burn' is fun, but also inspiring. You learn there are other elements than revenge to realize yourself. Especially when you are a teen and you are generally angry.

Even though, I would like to focus on chapters 2 and 4 ('Collector' and 'Walking at night'). These are good pieces of film art. They concern deep personal feelings, and, as a viewer, they are able to set you in a mood of tension or give you an embrace of warm sadness.

The storytelling of these two chapters is deliberately unspecific. That aspect joined to the fact of the concrete recurrent obsessions or fears of the characters, it makes you think that these two histories could perfectly have been extracted by one of the Japanese Haruki Murakami's anthologies of short stories.

I give to 'Persona' a rating of 7. It could have been higher if they had got rid of 'Love Match'. I think this is a huge mistake of the producers. But, apart from this fact, I was able to enjoy the remaining part. Especially 'Walking at Night'.

Maybe I just don't like these kinds of dramas. It felt weird and crazy and appears to be a black satire. I also feel that the acting of IU are all the same for the four dramas. It has four different stories but it has the same delivery of strong but soft spoken-stoic face acting.

PERSONA (2019) was a well made Korean anthology of stories, but due to the one episode length span of each story there is only so much that can be conveyed in terms of character development and depth, and only so much that can take place, per story, so they don't really hit too deep not as other Korean dramas might. However, they were still well made and acted, visually stunning and intriguing. In my opinion the writing struggled in these episodes, but still does give the viewer pause to think.

Worth the watch mainly for the quality of the production and the acting by Eun-Ji Lee (IU) and Doona Bae, as well as the capable directing and visual effects.

Episode Rating: LOVE SET [5/10] COLLECTOR [7/10] KISS BURN [8/10] WALKING AT NIGHT [8/10]

Four short films starring the incredibly talented Lee Ji-eun ( I. U.) looking at her different personas. It is well produced and each story draws you in and holds your attention. You can enjoy the individual stories or can try to interpret the deeper meaning that each director was probably trying to convey. Whichever you do it is an entertaining set of dramas.

All four short films were shot in different styles. The first "Love Zero" is a temptation that represents the seduction between maturity and maturity. It reminds me of iu's previous song "Everyone Has a Secret." The second "Long-No-Corruption" is a woman who plays with men and fleeting love. There is a saying I like, "A man chats with a woman to go to bed with her, and a woman wants to chat with a man before going to bed with him. "The third" Kiss is Sin "is an interesting and naughty short film. It means that boys and girls are always full of illusions about whatever they want in their youth, often because their unintentional actions hurt others without knowing it. The fourth "Walking in the Night" is my favorite. The story is set in a dream of walking with the dead at night. I think this method of dealing with the subject of death is very special, although dreams and the like often appear. Scene, but I was the first time to see the dream as a main story directly. In addition, director Jin Zongguan used black and white photography to make the entire film more poetic.