Irma Vep escaped me until just a few months ago and I’m not exactly sure how that happened.
For starters, I absolutely adore movies that are about making movies, and if there was one film genre the late 90’s/early 2000’s had plenty of it was the metatextual film about film making. Besides Irma Vep there was Bowfinger, Living in Oblivion, Ed Wood, Adaptation, State and Main, Shadow of the Vampire, Boogie Nights…etc. None of those managed to avoid my viewing habits but somehow a movie starring the always amazing and gorgeous Maggie Cheung in a latex catsuit somehow did.
I’ll blame it on my lack of awareness when it came to the films of writer/director Olivier Assayas, whom I didn’t discover until one of his most recent films, Personal Shopper (which is brilliant but I probably don’t need to mention that to anyone reading this review). I don’t remember my video store ever having a copy of this on the shelf either, so I can at least give some of the blame to them.
Irma Vep is a movie about Maggie Cheung, playing herself, as she gets to Paris to work on the newest film, Irma Vep, which is a remake of an old French film Les Vampires (rearrange the letters to get a clue why the film has its title.) She feels she’s way out of her element, this being her first time to really do an action film where it falls on her shoulders as well as it being in a language she doesn’t speak. All around her people are of course speaking French, but only when they speak English does she understand them. She hasn’t had much in the way of direction, as the problematic director Rene Vidal (played by Jean-Pierre Leaud) is rarely on set and in the middle of a breakdown. She relies on those who speak to her the most, mainly costume designer Zoe (Nathalie Richard) who also has the hots for her. Honestly, just about everyone in the movie does because it’s freaking Maggie Cheung.
The film is filled with plenty of industry talk as well as looks behind the scenes and if any of it borders on the truth, it appears more like high school than anything else with all the snipping and gossip that occurs. People make surface friends and then are ready to toss them aside if a better opportunity comes along and usually only want to talk about what they want to talk about, much like the insipid journalist that comes along later in the film.
But don’t let any of this lead you to believe that Irma Vep isn’t an excellent and engaging film, because it is. It makes excellent use of its small cast and locations and is filmed in a variety of styles, especially towards the end when we get to see clips of the film within the film. The worst part about the movie is that we didn’t get the actual “Les Vampires” to go with it.
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
