Letter #53: Persona

Good morning, Erin. 
 
I couldn’t decide which of your recommendations to jump into next, so I opted for a quick palate cleanser, instead, since I’m likely to see you sometime in the next couple of days anyway and can just ask you to tell me what to do next. (Which we both know is for the best.)
 
Of course, this is a catch-22, isn’t it: for me to pick a palate cleanser because I don’t know which item from your list to start, I must, by definition, choose something outside of your list…which is the single persistent problem I’ve run across in my trek through K-dramas. Alas, what could I choose that would not end in total disaster?
 
Well, how about Persona, a four-part short-film anthology project starring Lee Ji-eun? Because no matter how good or bad the thing is, I still get to look at Lee Ji-eun, who is one of the prettiest girls in the world. 
 
What could go wrong?
 
Cough.
 
1. So, short-film number one is a psychosexual art piece about Lee Ji-eun not wanting her father to marry her English tutor because she doesn’t want another woman to f*** her dad. I think. 
 
1A. No, seriously, I don’t think the story (such as it is) makes sense if it’s not her acting on an Electra complex. (And the bit where she wraps herself around him would make even less sense.)
 
1B. Why do I say “psychosexual”? Well, specifics of the Electra complex aspect aside, it takes place on a tennis court, which means our girl and her English tutor do A LOT of needlessly sexual grunting as they bat balls back and forth. 
 
1C. There’s also the fact that they’re both wearing adorable little tennis outfits—which isn’t an issue—and we spend A LOT OF TIME leering at Lee Ji-eun’s legs. Like, a lot. A lot. A creepy amount of a lot. (There’s even a point where she cuts her leg after diving for a ball, and the blood that drips down her leg is filmed in such a way that it almost evokes (or does, I guess, at least to me) a sense of a loss of virginity.) Like, don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind being able to look at IU in a little tennis skirt, but I don’t need the camera to do the leering for me. That just makes the whole thing feel exploitative. 
 
1D. The director of this film in the anthology was a woman, just for the record.  
 
1E. Her opponent is played by the Nurse from Kingdom, which was cool. I like her. She’s good. 
 
1F. …but, since she’s in this psychosexual film, she gets an odd somewhat leer-y moment where she seems to pull a tennis ball out from under the lollipop of her tennis skirt. Plus all the grunting, of course. And maybe some other stuff, honestly, since she was in a skimpier outfit than Lee Ji-eun, but I think we both know why I didn’t take as much notice of it, if it was there. 
 
1G. We do get a lot of Lee Ji-eun dropping f-bombs in English, though. Which is…unique. I guess. 
 
1H. But, yeah, this was bizarre. And a little bit uncomfortable. 
 
2. The second short-film is a psychosexual exploration of…um…maybe disparate levels of romantic interest between two people in a relationship based mostly on physical attraction? Maybe? It’s something to do with love and having feelings and Lee Ji-eun wearing a long dress with a slit up the side. 
 
2A. In terms of storytelling, this one is a little more direct with its artsy short-film techniques. So, it’s still weird, but it’s weird in a way that you’d recognize as being artsy-weird. Like watching a David Lynch movie. (If…that means anything to you.)
 
2B. But it still starts with Lee Ji-eun “doing yoga” in a large, dried up swimming pool—that is, she’s face down/ass up in yoga pants as the camera does slightly less leering than in the previous film.
 
2C. …which makes me think the “I want to show other sides of me” thing she keeps bringing up in interviews about Persona is mostly her saying that she can be naughty, too. But I digress.
 
2D. There’s a neat bit of visual detail, in this, where she gives the male protagonist a mysterious box that contains the answers he wants (about her), and the box has a very similar design on it as the dress she’s wearing. Which is a nice way of saying that she is the mysterious box. I appreciated that.
 
2E. It’s a little pretentious, as short films tend to be. Not a bad concept, if not always as sharp as it should be, often giving theatrics preference over groundedness.
 
2F. ,,,that said, near the end, Lee Ji-eun gives a modestly predatory aroused look to the camera, and my brain shut down for a couple of seconds, I’m pretty sure. So. 
 
3. The third film in the collection is basically just two high school girls talking about how one of them got a bunch of hickeys from some stranger she met at the beach when she snuck out of her house, one night. Also, they try to make her dad slip and fall. Like, as an act of revenge against him for being a jerkface. To what end? I dunno. 
 
3A. While this is distinctly not a psychosexual anything, there is a good amount of (innocent) discussion about the excitement that comes with making out with a boy. And there’s arguably a slight IU butt-shot, at one point. But I think I only noticed it because the previous two films were so overtly sexual. 
 
3B. I don’t know what this was actually about, to be totally honest. But it did prominently feature Lee Ji-eun doing a laughable job of looking like she knows how to smoke, which probably amuses me as much as seeing how silly she looks when she runs in things. 
 
4. And our fourth and final film is about ghost-IU talking to her maybe-boyfriend in a dream just after she’s died. It’s shot in black and white and features a couple of interesting cinematographic choices (shooting characters from behind or in total silhouette or speaking to each other exclusively through voiceover)—all of which took away our ability to see the characters' mouths moving when they spoke. Which…might have meant something. Maybe.
 
4A.This didn’t seem to be a psychosexual piece…but IU was in cutoff jeans the whole time, so I can’t be totally sure. 
 
This was…very strange. But I got to see Lee Ji-eun for two hours. Which means it was a win. 
 
Also, I may or may not be starting a Korean reality dating show called Transit Love 2. So… I really hope you’re back soon. Clearly I need help. 
 
—Daryl