The pop music industry is one of single stories. Regardless of the language or nationality of the industry, pop musicians are essentially told to fit into the ideal mold: find a sound that makes money and keep it, stay away from trouble, hold the beauty standards instead of transgressing them, don’t get married, and definitely don’t have children. Lisa, one of the four members of the South Korean girl group BLACKPINK, refuses to reduce herself to a monostory. Always Lalisa uses many colors to paint a portrait of its titular star, complicating one of the world’s biggest musicians in the process.
Director Sue Kim’s documentary is a filmic accompaniment to Lisa’s 2025 solo debut album Alter Ego, an intentional melange of contrasting sounds and aesthetics. Lisa creates five characters — Roxi, Kiki, Vixi, Sunni, and Speedi — to make her point: she is more than a one-dimensional K-pop rapper. The doc runs parallel to this assertion by showing the many faces of Lisa: a daughter, singer, prayer, friend, pottymouth partier, would-be lover, and even a controversial edge. She speaks in three languages and isn’t afraid to say “cunty” on camera. She cries. She even points a middle finger to the industry that made her a superstar, while giving a glimpse to the darker side of K-pop. Rarely do these documentaries work so well in thematic tandem with the music at their center.
Born as Pranpriya Manobal in Thailand, the future global popstar’s mother later changed her daughter’s name to Lalisa on the advice of a fortune teller. Thai is her native tongue, and though she has never shied from speaking the language to the media, Always Lalisa noticeably favors Thai over Korean, English, or any of the other languages she speaks. Here, she is Lalisa — Thai for “the one being praised” — rather than Lisa. The linguistic preference gestures toward a personal authenticity that corroborates her interviews in the film lamenting the attacks on that very authenticity. It might also foreshadow her comparatively more Thai sonic (re)turn with “Sawadika.”
In Always Lalisa, former In Review Online contributor Joshua Minsoo Kim’s Pitchfork review of the album is featured in a screenshot, in a turning point from the optimism of Lisa and her team to the questionable reception the album received from critics. The critics and dissenters become the villains; they are the world from her song, “FXCK UP THE WORLD,” which might double as the refrain of the film’s last third. The artist’s N-word scandal fits into this mold too, though this episode in her career is presented here as one fit with more regret and born of ignorance than aggression. According to her, she rapped songs that used the word without self-censoring when she was a teenage trainee, and after the tapes were leaked, director Kim wastes no time in turning her into a victim. She knows the word is unacceptable for her to use in the present, and claims she clearly did not know that as a young teenager from Thailand living and working in South Korea, but when exactly she learned what she knows now remains obfuscated. Regardless, the apology still leaves something lacking, though this will come as no new issue to those familiar. And the film’s structuring of this within the “FXCK UP THE WORLD” bit complicates the issue more by shifting Lisa from scandal creator to villain in a flash.
As Blackpink continues to evade a comeback, Always Lalisa’s focus on Lisa’s individuality and self-actualization may hint that the group’s hiatus has no end schedule as of yet. The next move for Lisa, as presented at the end of the documentary, promises another look inward, to herself and her own music, rather than teasing a longing for collaboration again. Whatever is next, hopefully it is as thematically sturdy and zealous as Always Lalisa.
DIRECTOR: Sue Kim; DISTRIBUTOR: Trafalgar Releasing; IN THEATERS: October 12; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 38 min.
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