Okay, so I just suggested a very silly bad sequel to one
great classic Ingmar Bergman film, so how about another? This time it’s a
sequel for Persona, but mostly I’m doing
it because of the silly title I came up with for it: Persona 2:
Persona non Grata.
This sequel takes the scene from the end of the film Persona further, showing the entire film again, but from a
different perspective, showing the film crew and the director in every shot,
acting as though the whole film was filmed spontaneously like a documentary of
a real (as in unscripted) situation, and suggesting that the women would have
gotten along fine, but that having the film crew around made them have
unnecessary conflicts because they felt pressure and/or wanted to steal the
scene because they were being filmed. (This might actually be a pretty good
commentary on the reality show phenomenon, and how badly and obnoxiously people
behave in those. Maybe these people would behave more normally and nicely
without cameras always filming them?) Then, at the end of the film, the two
actresses yell at the director and film crew to leave them alone and get out of
the house (suggesting that the director is the “persona non grata” of the
title), and the camera pans across the room, away from the camera crew filming
the movie, and into the far end of the room, where it becomes a darkened
theater showing people watching the film Persona 2: and they’re all asleep in their popcorn or texting,
except for one pretentious critic staring in slack-jawed amazement with an
euphoric look in his/her eyes.
