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Irma Vep
France 1996
produced by Georges Benayoun, Grancoise Guglielmi (executive) for Dacia Film, Canal+
directed by Olivier Assayas
starring Maggie Cheung, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Nathalie Richard, Antoine Basler, Nathalie Boutefeu, Alex Descas, Dominique Faysse, Arsinée Khanjian, Bernard Nissile, Olivier Torres, Bulle Ogier, Lou Castel, Jacques Fieschi, Estelle Larrivaz, Balthazar Clémenti, Lara Cowez, Dominique Cuny, Jessica Doyle, Sandra Faure, Catherine Ferny, Maryel Ferraud, Filip Forgeau, Nicolas Giraudin, Valerie Guy, Lauren Jacquet, Philippe Landoulsi, Smail Mekki, Maurice Najman, Yann Richard, Jérôme Simonin, Alexandra Yonnet, Pierre Amzallag, Francoise Clavel, Francoise Guglielmi, Odile Horion, Francois-Renaud Labarthe, Alain Martin, Guy-Patrick Sainderichin, Willy Martin
written by Olivier Assayas, music by Phillippe Richard
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Washed-out arthouse director René Vidal (Jean-Pierre Léaud) has the
ill-adviced idea to remake the classic silent serial Les Vampires
by Louis Feuillade) with Hong Kong action superstar Maggie Cheung in the
lead as the cat burglar Irma Vep. When Maggie arrives on set, she finds a
disorganized crowd trying to get things moving, is dragged to a sexshop by
the film's costumer Zoe (Nathalie Richard), where she is put into a latex
catsuit, has to realize Vidal hasn't really thought through his project,
has problems communicating witht he crew because nobody speaks her
language or speaks English nearly as well as her. Plus, it eventually
turns out Zoe is madly in love with her, which embarrasses Maggie a
little. However, gradually, Maggie gets into her role, to an extent that
she, to get into the right mood, breaks into another room in her hotel to
steal some (ugly) trinkets. Then one day, René Vidal disappears, and
since nobody on set liked him anyways, they just keep on filming. Only
Maggie makes the effort to track him down and pay a visit to him, which
wasn't even much of a problem (not even for a Chinese with no command over
the French language). But it turns out that René's disappearance
(supposed to have been caused by a nervous breakdown) might have only been
an elegant exit strategy, and before the day is over, another director
(Lou Castel) is hired - who wants Maggie off the film and gives her
stuntgirl (Nathalie Boutefeu) the role of Irma Vep, who he insists has to
be French. Not that Maggie has to mind too much about a shortage of
roles ... The following is my theory, and I have virtually
nothing to back it up, but that doesn't mean I'm necessarily wrong -
right? Anyways, in a way this film looks as if director Olivier Assayas at
one point wanted to remake Les Vampires himself, maybe even with
Maggie Cheung in the lead - but other than René Vidal - whom he has very
probably not based on himself - in his film, he has come to the conclusion
this is not such a good idea just in time, and instead come up with what I
would call a "what if"-story, which resulted in this film. Now
on a narrative level, Irma Vep is not terribly impressive, it
actually doesn't have much of a story to tell, sometimes loses its
narrative focus, and is a bit convoluted - and yet the film works just
beautifully, basically despite narrative shortcomings it flows remarkably
well, remains entertaining and unpretentious throughout, and doesn't try
to be more than it is, a little film about filmmaking. And because it
doesn't try, it does succeed to be more than just another little film
about filmmaking ...
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