JISOO returns to the screen in Portraits of a Woman in Motion, a four-part series from the London fashion label Self-Portrait. Directed by Oliver Hadlee Pearch and filmed in Seoul, the project opened on November 10 with “The Restaurant.” The BLACKPINK singer is the calm figure at the centre of the film as an ordinary setting slips into a faster, stranger rhythm.
A restaurant is an unremarkable place to sit still, which makes it a useful setting for the first film in Portraits of a Woman in Motion. Around JISOO, the pace starts to slip. Lights shift, the background accelerates and an ordinary room takes on the slightly disorienting quality of a place that no longer runs on the same clock as the person sitting in it.
Oliver Hadlee Pearch directed the film in Seoul. The restaurant gives him a setting viewers can recognise immediately, so the changes in lighting and movement register before the scene needs any explanation. The surrounding activity does much of the work. As the room speeds up, a controlled gesture or a small change of expression becomes easier to pick out.
The styling gives viewers something else to follow through those shifts. In the first episode, JISOO wears a cardigan that mixes knit textures, a lilac top with lace details and a gold sequinned skirt that falls below the knee. The pieces are drawn from Self-Portrait’s Resort 2027 collection. The variation in surface, from knit to lace to sequins, gives each piece a different presence in a scene where the light keeps changing.
Self-Portrait is releasing the project as four short films, each built around a different imagined everyday setting. “The Restaurant” opened the series on November 10. The second episode is due November 12. Starting with a place as familiar as a restaurant lets the production establish how the films work before moving the performer into another space.
In a statement accompanying the premiere, JISOO linked the premise to the speed of her own working life. She described moving among cities, stages and studios, with the setting and demands changing from one day to the next. The idea of staying recognisably herself amid that movement gave her a personal way into a film that expresses the same experience through its editing and design.
She also spoke about the clothes in terms of familiarity. The way she described the partnership, what she wears can give her a point of continuity across very different settings. That idea is visible in the first film. The outfit remains a recognisable part of the character as the light changes and the room starts to feel less predictable.
Han Chong, Self-Portrait’s founder and creative director, described a similar quality from the perspective of someone who has worked with her over several years. He said she carries herself with the same composure in different surroundings. The campaign takes that observation and turns it into something a viewer can see in a short scene, with the background supplying the change.
The two collaborators explored a different premise in Portraits of a Screen Star earlier this autumn. JISOO played four characters in that series, using imagined auditions as the setting. Clothing and performance helped establish a fresh identity in each film. The new project keeps the short format and shifts the transformations to the space around the performer, beginning with a single room.
The collaboration dates to March 2024, when JISOO became the first musician to front a campaign for the London label. The work has since moved from collection imagery into short films with their own settings and premises. Portraits of a Woman in Motion gives the partnership room to build an idea across episodes while still giving each film its own location.
The screen work is a separate strand of her public career alongside BLACKPINK and her solo music. The series was made to present a fashion collection, and its opening depends on the relationship between clothing, performance and editing. The short running time allows those elements to work in close quarters, where the difference between the character’s pace and the room’s pace can be felt almost immediately.
For JISOO, the format offers a different kind of presence from a stage performance. The camera can stay with a quiet expression while the setting establishes the tempo. There is no need for the character to acknowledge every change around her. In “The Restaurant,” that restraint is what holds the scene together as the lighting and activity slip out of their usual rhythm.
“The Restaurant” is available through Self-Portrait, which is also showing the looks from the campaign. The next episode, due November 12, will take the same premise into a different setting. The first film leaves the viewer with the image on which the series turns: the room rushing around a figure who has time to stay where she is.
