User reviews

'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'.

Overall, Persona is an interesting and well-done miniseries that mostly succeeds in exploring its themes.

The miniseries explores what it means to love or care deeply for someone, across the span of four episodes. Each episode is stylistically distinct and unique due to the artistic freedom the four directors were given.

Although the same actress plays the main role in all four episodes, she convincingly portrays four very different characters and aspects of love. This serves as a pleasant thematic connection across all four episodes.

The shortcomings of this project lie in the overall varied quality. Episode 2 and 3 are undoubtedly the strongest. Maybe it was just me but episode 2 reminded me of Under the Skin (2013). Episode 1 fell short due to its bad pacing and jarring use of English, while episode 4 never got interesting, mostly because of its dull script.

Despite this, it is well worth a watch.

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, but they were still well made and acted, visually stunning and intriguing. In my opinion the writing struggled in these episodes, but do 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]

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.

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.

Have no idea what this series was about. Four unrelated short stories. I was surprised IU would stared in it. And that was the reason I watched.

Still don't see the point of this.

I love walking at night and collector. I think both of them is the most intriguing one. The love set was kind of confusing, but still it was fun to watch.

This is 4 short films told in a a surreal and black mirror-ish way. IU is great with her acting skills, which she has proven multiple times (specially with 'my mister' IMO)

The 4 films span out to roughly to 1 hour and 20 minutes. And are each directed in a different way as they are directed by different directors.

If you liked IU from "Moon Lovers" and other kdramas like "Dream high" you might not find the same charm.

Don't fret about the low ratings as the sample size is quite low (while I'm writing it)

Its a must watch if you like movies and series which are weird and sometimes create more questions than answers them.

Don't miss it

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.

Persona pleasantly surprised me. I didn't expect this mini-series to be so interesting, unique and of high quality!

Each episode had its own unique story, the common factor being the persona. (IU) She appears in each episode as the central point of the storyline. What I noticed was that she was always in control, assertive and had a dominant character in each persona.

The acting wasn't anything special. I could rate it average.

What really stood out to me was the montage, light and sound editing. In those aspects, the episodes were put together almost perfectly, my favourite being the fourth and final one.

Though such short storylines could be a bother to some, it didn't stop the mini-series from being very artistic and well put together. The editing made a great impact on me and each storyline left me wondering afterwards. Not because of a cliffhanger, but because I wanted to know more about the persona.

Overall, this is worth a 10 to me. Considering shows like these are gems in the Korean tv show industry.