What a view | K-pop star IU turns her talents to acting in Netflix anthology Persona, about love’s many manifestations
- Lee Ji-eun stars in all four instalments of the miniseries, each of which is directed by a different acclaimed South Korean filmmaker
- Plus, Amazon Prime’s Sneaky Pete returns for a third season of cons, crimes and plot twists
“Love is awful. It’s painful. It’s frightening. It makes you selfish. It makes you creepy,” says Andrew Scott’s priest in the BBC’s eccentric cult comedy Fleabag. His counter-intuitive sermon should have been emblazoned across curious Netflix anthology Persona, a four-strong short-film collection each directed by a different, decorated South Korean filmmaker.
In one offering, a whimsical, winsome Lee tortures an older, would-be lover with tales of other probable conquests. She tells the helpless, hopeless man, “You’re just … not cool,” and the outcome for him is grisly. Elsewhere, she appears as a pouting, sweat-drenched, tennis-playing seductress on whom the tables are surprisingly turned; a mischievous brat seeking murderous revenge; and a gamine spirit who cheerfully announces, “The sense of disappearing – that’s all there is.”
If the miniseries is intended as a vehicle for Lee, it works well: it’s difficult to picture a more accomplished sexual manipulator – with the innocence of a butterfly and the bite of a viper. Not that this study of, broadly, the romantic impulse and emotional reactions to it, is about Lee alone; a surreal, haunting aspect informs at least two of the stories.
Then again, there is a voyeuristic flavour to some, especially when Lee is in close-up. She’s a player of many personas; and for innumerable viewers before screens large and small she’s destined to become, to misappropriate Shakespeare, “such stuff as dreams are made on”.
Amazon Prime’s Sneaky Pete returns for a third season of serious swindling
