Review of Irma Vep (1996) by Stuart K — 30 Dec 2012

Directed by Olivier Assayas, (Cold Water (1994), Boarding Gate (2007) and Summer Hours (2008)), this is a very offbeat comedy-drama which takes a candid look at filmmaking and turns it on it's head more than once or twice.

It was meant as a comment on French cinema in the mid-1990's, and what was going on, but it owes a debt of gratitude to François Truffaut's Day For Night (1973), which Assayas cites as heavy inspiration.

It has Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung (playing herself) coming to France to act in a remake of Les Vampires (1915), being reimagined by director René Vidal (Jean-Pierre Léaud). Cheung will be playing the part of Irma Vep (an anagram of vampire), who spends most of the film remake dressed in a tight, black, latex rubber catsuit.

However, as time goes on, Cheung finds herself becoming Irma Vep, and finds herself going out acreoss the rooftops of Paris in the catsuit, meanwhile the film's costume designer Zoe (Nathalie Richard) and director Vidal develop love crushes on Cheung as Irma Vep.

It's a very original way of doing a film within a film, and the film switches back and forth between French and English at the flick of a switch, and it has some weird montages too, but it's a look about the nightmares directors face when making films and the horror at having to compromise.

Assayas does good with the material and it's a good way of doing a remake, show it from another perspective, pull and and show it being made.