Synopsis
A Chinese movie actress, in France to star in a remake of "Les Vampires", finds petty intrigues and clashing egos on the set.
1996 Directed by Olivier Assayas
A Chinese movie actress, in France to star in a remake of "Les Vampires", finds petty intrigues and clashing egos on the set.
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 Giraudi Valerie Guy Laurent Jacquet Philippe Landoulsi Smaïl Mekki Maurice Najman Yann Richard Show All…
이마 베프, Ирма Веп, 迷离劫, 女飛賊再現江湖, イルマ・ヴェップ
that ending was one of the coolest things i’ve seen in a movie. filmmaking seems fun!
"I'd rather have people feel a film before understanding it."
- Robert Bresson
A satire on the filmmaking process and how misguided the film industry is, touching upon tentpole films and pointless remakes, female sexualization/male gaze, and the idea that many filmmakers make films out of their own selfish desires instead of making them for people to resonate with, to be challenged, or for artists to truly express themselves.
That said, it never once feels condescending and instead comes purely from a place of love and passion for cinema, and it’s all further elevated by wonderful work from Maggie Cheung (playing herself) and Olivier Assayas’s direction.
A must see for any film lover.
92/100
Celebrating 20 years of being powerless to articulate my intense love for this glorious whatsit. As I wrote back in '97, it "seems in some bizarre way to entirely transcend logic and reason, so that whatever limited critical faculties I possess are completely disengaged, and I'm reduced to pointing at the screen with a wild-eyed, gleeful expression." What I'm mostly responding to, I think, is Assayas' passion both for Cheung and for cinema itself—more specifically, to the way that those two passions intersect and collide. He's made a movie that's fundamentally an open letter to himself asking why he feels driven to make this movie, and he never does come up with a coherent answer. In less assured hands,…
omg I never realized that "IRMA VEP" was an anagram for "VAMPIRE" ??????? HOW do I have a master's degree!??!?!?!
I get why so many people are obsessed with Maggie Cheung now.
This is a dream-like film wherein Cheung plays herself in a collapsing film production, caught as an outsider in a strange, detached world. The film is at once a critique of cinema and filmmaking and a strange sort of fantasy.
I think this movie is awesome despite the fact that characters in it diss Batman Returns AND Police Story. Monstrous behavior.
When the news broke that Olivier Assayas was collaborating with A24 on a TV version of “Irma Vep,” the only truly surprising thing about it was that the project had been conceived before the pandemic. Like Zoom orgies, government-sanctioned bleach injections, and the popular wisdom that Andrew Cuomo is somehow good at his job, the prospect of Assayas remaking his 1996 masterpiece is one of those things that would have seemed unfathomable just a few short months ago. Even for a restlessly inventive filmmaker whose previous foray into television produced the most exciting crime epic of the last 10 years, the pitch reeked of desperation, a fetishistic desire for “normalcy,” and the need to keep working at any cost.
Until…
One of the best endings in cinematic history. Would go in depth but my mind is fucking fried