August 06 2025, 21:59

Irma Vep

Director: Olivier Assayas

Release year: 1996

Hong Kong action star Maggie Cheung arrives in Paris to take the lead in a remake of a classic silent film, Les Vampires. The cast and crew are friendly, but Maggie is an outsider, and the group's conflicts and histories become increasingly pronounced as director René begins to realise the film is not working. Costume designer Zoé has a crush on Maggie, leading to further complications.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Sometimes a film hits you just right. The camera weaves between the people working on the film set so that it feels like we are eavesdropping. Each character has some sort of grievance or flaw that plays out through the story. Maggie Cheung, playing herself, navigates with charm the petty politics and negative opinions of the film (and French cinema in general!), staying ever the professional as things falls apart around her.

René’s film is based on an infatuation with the idea of Maggie Cheung in a catsuit. That’s his entire energy for the film, and once she arrives and he gets what he wants, because the script isn’t good enough to sustain the idea, he has a nervous breakdown. As an actress, Maggie needs to understand what her director wants from her. Distraught at the creative failure of the film and not being able to help, Maggie wears the latex catsuit to sneak around her hotel, as if she is Irma Vep, her role in René’s vision. She steals a necklace—but was it a dream?

Unwilling to be replaced on the film, René makes a cut from the footage for the new director which is completely unhinged and wonderful. Perhaps Assayas is saying that French cinema has the possibility of being more adventurous, for all the film’s talk of it being stuck in the past. This was made in 1996, almost thirty years ago. It makes me want to find out what happened.

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