Irma Vep

Irma Vep

Directed by Olivier Assayas
France / 1996
99 minutes / English & French / Color / Restoration / DCP

Olivier Assayas’s live-wire international breakthrough stars a magnetic Maggie Cheung as a version of herself: a Hong Kong action-movie star who arrives in Paris to play the latex-clad lead in a remake of Louis Feuillade’s classic silent crime serial “Les vampires.” What she finds is a behind-the-scenes tangle of barely controlled chaos as egos clash, romantic attractions simmer, and an obsessive director (a cannily cast Jean-Pierre Léaud) drives himself to the brink to realize his vision. Blending blasts of silent cinema, martial-arts flicks, and the music of Sonic Youth and Luna into a hallucinatory swirl of postmodern cool, Assayas composes in “Irma Vep” a witty critique of the ’90s French film industry and the perennial tension between art and commercial entertainment.

Intro and discussion by Joshua Ray, film critic for Cinema St. Louis’ The Lens blog and host of The Lens podcast.