Early in “Always Lalisa,” a fly-on-the-wall documentary chronicling a year in the life of Blackpink’s Lisa as she embarks on a solo career, the K-pop star runs through a list of things prohibited by their label YG. They are not allowed to drink, not allowed to date, not allowed to have a driver’s license, not allowed to go out and see their friends and their every movement is tracked. Sue Kim’s doc, in theaters Oct. 12, is unique in that it not only follows the Thai superstar as she takes a break from her popular girl group to form a management company; drop her first solo album “Alter Ego”; sing a Bond theme at the Oscars; make her acting debut in “The White Lotus”; and play Coachella, but also a time when she was finally freed from those harsh label restrictions to do as she pleased.
At first, it was like, ‘What should I do? What should I do?!’ I tried it step by step and little by little, gained a lot of confidence and learned so much on my own.” While you may be familiar with portions of Lisa’s backstory, such as her beating out 4,000 others at the age of 13 to become South Korean label YG’s first K-pop trainee and debuting as the resident rapper and dancer of Blackpink in 2016, “Always Lalisa” provides an intimate look at the performer learning to fly on her own, featuring interviews with friends, family and “White Lotus” creator Mike White, and even addresses Blackpink’s infamous leaked YG training videos that saw members using the N-word while rapping along to songs (and how the leaker made a series of threats against Lisa’s life). We do not see any sightings of Frédéric Arnault, the billionaire scion who was heavily rumored to be dating Lisa at the time of filming, and Kim, who also helmed the Apple TV series “K-Pop Idols” and is working on a doc on Olympian Chloe Kim, explained why he’s not there — and how she captured Lisa at her most vulnerable and honest.
I kind of hope I’m not the K-pop director because I think there are so many interesting K-pop stories that can be told wonderfully by other people. I wasn’t a huge K-pop fan but knew enough and appreciated it, and I was approached by Apple to do the “K-Pop Idols” series. They knew I didn’t know much about K-pop but knew I was Korean American, am very familiar with Korean culture and was talking to them already about making my last film, “The Last of the Sea Women.” The production company that they were working with sent me some development footage and it was such a fascinating, esoteric universe where there are rules and you have to do things a certain way.
I had complete and total freedom in making “Always Lalisa” from Sony Music Vision, who are my creative partners and the owner of this project. The reason why we were able to be so honest and so intimate and vulnerable with Lisa in this film is because it was her year away from K-pop, so those rules that she had to abide by didn’t apply this year. That was how I was able to get such unfettered access.
Lisa also understood that this year of freedom meant that she could express herself a little more openly and honestly, so it was a gift for both of us. We did not work with YG at all on this film. I will say that we tried very, very hard to license some of Lisa’s earlier trainee footage or Blackpink music videos or songs, and we were unfortunately not allowed to.
That was the extent of our interactions with YG. Every subject is different. For me, I find that that trust really comes through time.
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