Jeon Jong-seo promotes 'Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon' at Busan International Film Festival
by Ana Walia | Sat, 09 Oct 2021 16:51:50 GMT
Jeon Jong-seo is playing 'Mona' in "Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon. Image Source: Preview.ph 

South Korean actress Jeon Jong-seo arrived in Busan for the 26th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) to promote her Hollywood debut movie, ‘Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon’ where she stars with Kate Hudson. The movie is a fantasy film written and directed by Ana Lilly Amirpour and has its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 5th September 2021. John Lesher who is an Oscar winner is producing the movie via his Le Grisbi banner.

'Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon',  follows a girl with unusual and dangerous powers who escapes from a mental asylum and tries to make it on her own in New Orleans. With exciting sequences set to thrilling music including Italian Techno and Heavy Metal, this fantasy-adventure film is sure to invoke memories of the 1980s and 1990s.

"I wanted to find what's optimistic about this madness that we're all in. And I do think friendship is such a defining and important thing. It feeds us so much and it can take so many forms," said the director Ana Lilly Amirpour in an interview with Reuters ahead of the film's world premiere at Venice in September. Ana’s dystopian thriller ‘The Bad Batch’ of 2016 was also premiered at Venice.

Jeon is playing the lead character, Mona, a girl with supernatural powers who escapes from a mental hospital and meets a stripper Bonnie (Kate Hudson) who tries to profit from Mona's unusual powers. Her performance as Mona received appreciation from the critics.

Kate Hudson who stars as Bonnie in the movie said, "I sort of found this like a celebration of people who live very hard lives. I think there's this sort of liberating thing to be able to just live as you want and not care what other people think about your choices. And it was fun. It was fun to get into that with Bonnie.”

Lovia Gyarkye from The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Jeon (Burning) excels in her first English-language role, imbuing Mona with personality despite her limited dialogue". Variety's Owen Gleiberman wrote, "[i]n Jeon Jong-seo’s performance as Mona Lisa, you see the power and the alienation. And the two qualities work together in a cool and empathetic way".

Jeon: It was a fresh experience to play a wordless character with supernatural powers. Image Source: Reddit

The actress during a special talk at the 26th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) said, “It was a fresh experience to play a wordless character with supernatural powers as a foreign actor in her first English-language film ‘Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon’”. Jeon added that ‘Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon’ was her first American project and it required all the actors to go through an audition process and shared that she had joined the cast through an audition. “I sent my clips to producers and had an online meeting with the director”,  she concluded.

Jeon Jong-seo rose to fame with her role as ‘Hae-mi’  in the critically acclaimed movie ‘Burning’. She won Best Actress at the 57th Baeksang Arts Awards for her performance in the thriller movie ‘The Call’. She joined United Talent Agency as her representative agency in the United States using her English name Rachel Jun.

Jeon Jong-seo as Hae-mi’ in the critically acclaimed movie ‘Burning’. Image Source: Changwoner Entertainment 

The actress shared, "When I first read the script, I thought the movie was so intense. It speaks in a violent, explicit and direct way. I thought Mona was like me, as I was the only Asian in the place I visited for the first time during filming in the United States." Talking about working in Hollywood, the South Korean actress said that it was not much different from that in Korea but she missed Korean food while staying in New Orleans for three months.

Jeon Jong-seo is gearing up to essay the role of Tokyo, Netflix’s ‘Money Heist’ fame for the Korean adaptation. The Korean version of ‘Money Heist’ will also stream on Netflix.

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