IDOLS a new Korean psychological thriller inspired by PERFECT BLUE
On 11 October, London's Prince Charles Cinema pairs a new short film with the anime classic that inspired it. IDOLS, written and directed by British filmmaker (and long-time friend of Terracotta) Matt Halsall, screens ahead of a showing of PERFECT BLUE, and the connection between the two runs far deeper than a shared double bill.
A film born out of PERFECT BLUE
Catching up with Matt Halsall, he described PERFECT BLUE as the true starting point for IDOLS, and says it means a great deal to him personally to have his own short play before it at a cinema he loves. He was candid that making something so clearly shaped by a film you admire doesn't come with any guarantee the two will ever actually share a programme, so the pairing carries real weight for him.
What draws him to PERFECT BLUE, he explained, is how totally it pulls the audience into its protagonist's perspective: the way identity, performance and obsession blur into one another until they're impossible to separate. It's not just the imagery that lingers afterwards, but the unease of watching someone lose their grip on how the world sees and understands them.
Exploring identity through K-pop
That's the same territory Halsall set out to explore with IDOLS, though he's quick to clarify he never set out to remake or recreate PERFECT BLUE. Rather, Satoshi Kon's film gave him a way in: a lens for thinking about celebrity and identity through psychological thriller, and his adopted home of Seoul made the world of K-pop a natural setting to dig into those questions.
Halsall is drawn to the enormous effort hidden behind a public image that's designed to look effortless. We only ever see the finished performance, the photograph, the person being admired, while the private reality of the person behind that image can be something else entirely. IDOLS lives in the tension between those two things, and in what happens when someone on the outside becomes fixated on the image rather than the person.
One actress, two identities
Casting was critical to making that tension work. Hojo Shin, familiar to streaming audiences from XO, KITTY, plays both central roles: a K-pop trainee still chasing her debut in her late twenties, and the superstar she's told she's the spitting image of. Halsall needed an actress capable of convincing an audience they're watching two distinct people while clearly recognising the same face throughout, giving each woman her own presence before letting the line between them start to blur. He's called watching that balancing act come together one of the most rewarding parts of making the film.
An ambitious shoot, backed by Mowg's score
For a short film, the production was unusually demanding. Scenes featuring both of Hojo Shin's characters needed meticulous planning, often with only one or two takes available to get them right. Halsall wanted IDOLS to feel cinematic and immersive, with a heightened quality closer to a dark fairy tale than straightforward realism, a tone carried through in the cinematography, the production design, and the original score from composer Mowg, whose past credits include I SAW THE DEVIL and BURNING.
From Fantasia to London
IDOLS had its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival before crossing to Los Angeles for its US premiere at Beyond Fest, with a Sitges screening to follow. Those festival stops have each been exciting in their own right, but Halsall has said there's something different about bringing the film home to London, where he grew up, and to a cinema that means as much to him as the Prince Charles.
Catch it at the Prince Charles Cinema
IDOLS screens at the Prince Charles Cinema on 11 October, directly ahead of PERFECT BLUE. If you can't make the screening, or simply want Satoshi Kon's original on your shelf, Terracotta Distribution stocks PERFECT BLUE on Blu-ray, the film that, by the director's own account, made IDOLS possible in the first place.