Irma Vep
| Irma Vep | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by | Olivier Assayas |
| Produced by | Georges Benayoun |
| Written by | Olivier Assayas |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Eric Gautier |
| Edited by | Luc Barnier |
| Distributed by | Dacia Films |
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Release date
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November 13, 1996 |
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Running time
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97 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French/English |
| Budget | $1.4 million |
| Box office | $520.000 |
Irma Vep is a 1996 film directed by the French director Olivier Assayas, starring Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung (playing herself) in a story about the disasters that result as a middle-aged French film director (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud) attempts to remake Louis Feuillade's classic silent film serial Les vampires. Taking place as it does largely through the eyes of a foreigner (Cheung), it is also a meditation on the state of the French film industry at that time.
The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.
Cheung is employed to play the film-within-the-film's heroine, Irma Vep (an anagram for vampire), a burglar, who spends most of the film dressed in a tight, black, latex rubber catsuit, defending her director's odd choices to hostile crew members and journalists. As the film progresses, the plot mirrors the disorientation felt by the film's director. Cheung the character is in many ways seen by other characters as an exotic sex object dressed in a latex catsuit; both the director and Cheung's costume designer Zoe (Nathalie Richard) have crushes on her.
The film makes reference to iconic figures in French film history: Louis Feuillade, Musidora, Arletty, François Truffaut, the Groupe SLON, Alain Delon, and Catherine Deneuve. Thematically, the film questions the place of French cinema today. It is not a “mourning for cinema with the romantic nostalgia” but “more like the Mexican Day of the Dead: remembrance as an act of celebration,” so that “It is less a film about re-presenting the past, than it is a film about addressing the present, specifically the place of France within the global economy.”
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Wikipedia