Customer Reviews

Irma Vep (Essential Edition)

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Irma Vep elicits two reactions from different groups of people: nay sayers who view it as yet another boring French film and people who focus on the film-about-a-film. I think it is seriously misleading to view the film in either of these lights. Irma Vep should be viewed as a series of short films, tied together by the "plot" of the film. Each mini-plot is fascinating and together make the film wonderful.

If you don't know, Irma Vep is a movie about a Hong Kong action star (Maggie cheung) who arrives in Paris to do a remake of a 1915 French film about the French underworld. The director is losing his emotional stability and eventually the crew unravels. A lot has been said about the "film within the film" aspect of the movie, so I won't say more. What I think is fascinating is how the director tells a number of stories within this strange plot:

- The crash and burn of a film crew
- Zoe, the costume designer who is attracted to Maggie and she is rejected
- Maggie's desire to indulge in her criminal fantasies
- the director's strangely engaging mini-film

Since all this takes place in the middle of chaos, it can be hard to appreciate at first. There is really no beginning or end of the film. It is abrupt, which I think must reflect the experience of someone who arrives in the middle of turmoil. But each mini-plot is lovingly filmed and well acted. It also helps a great deal that Maggie Cheung is an attractive actress who can really carry well while wearing a latex suit the director insists she wear. The rest of the cast puts in a great performance as well, which allows you to engage with the other characters. On top of that, the film has lots of great shots - the weird footage at the end, Maggie sneaking through the hotel, the obligatory French dinner party, an incisive slam on the French film indusrty, etc..

Definitely worth it for people who can tolerate unusual plot structures and who enjoy beauty in unusual places. Check it out.

What the world needs is a movie about producing a book. You know, the creative angst of the author as he tries to remember when to use "which" and when to use "that," the nasty arguments over choosing a typeface, the dust jacket tantrums about artistic integrity if both boobs are shown or just one, the cattiness of the editors and, perhaps most insightful, whether the proofreading will continue to be the night guard's responsibility during his dinner break or whether the delivery boy from the next door deli should be given a crack at it.

Until that movie is made, Irma Vep will have to do. Please note that elements of the plot are discussed but there are absolutely no spoilers here or in the movie. Irma Vep is a movie about making a movie and it's stuffed with angst, pettiness, tantrums, ego and confusion. Taken on one of its own terms -- is it any good just as a movie -- the answer in my opinion is a loud "yes." Forget all the inside cineaste stuff (it is French, after all) and you may find that Irma Vep is funny, not just clever. It's good-natured with a friendly performance by Hong Kong kung fu heroine Maggie Cheung playing herself. Most of all, it is so eccentric a movie I seldom could stop smiling.

Rene Vidal (Jean-Pierre Leaud), an aging New Wave director now well past his sell-by date, is planning a comeback. He'll re-make a long, long and long ago silent movie called Les Vampires, a movie about a gang of criminals who prowl and stalk. One of them, in a skin-tight black body suit and black mask, is named Irma Vep. She will be Vidal's inspiration. He has just the star in mind to play Irma...Maggie Cheung. Maggie, who doesn't speak French, shows up in Paris ready to work. Cast and crew snipe and argue in many mini-dramas. Vidal collapses. Cast and crew snipe and argue some more. Maggie, an outsider and quite taken by the black latex outfit she and the costume designer, Zoe (Nathalie Richard) picked up cheap at a Parisian sex shop, whiles away the time one night by creeping about her hotel wearing the suit. Like Irma Vep, Maggie sees things in the hallways and rooms, some worth taking, and then there is the nighttime rain and the high, outside fire escape leading up to the hotel's roof. All does not go well for the movie. Eventually Maggie leaves for New York to take a meeting with Ridley Scott.

Not much there, I know, except for director and writer Olivier Assayas' amusing style and Maggie Cheung's bemusement and lithe creeping. There is much pleasure in Assayas' take on movie making and movie people, but the pleasure for me comes from noticing how I came to rather enjoy and like all those behind-the-scenes groupies, workers and jerks. The dish, of course, is amusing. "Directors thrive on hypocrisy," says one. "Yeah," says another, "but sometimes they go overboard." The interview between Maggie and a young, intense film enthusiast is priceless...John Woo versus Jean-Luc Godard. The film enthusiast has strong opinions about both. Maggie doesn't.

Maggie Cheung gives a sweet center to this movie, but I liked just as much Nathalie Richard as Zoe, the lean, blonde, tentative, cigarette-smoking, girl-liking costume designer. She's past her prime if you're a teenage boy, but right at her peak if you're an adult of either sex.

Film lovers might enjoy one message. "Cinema is not magic. It's a technique and a science. A technique born of science and at the service of a will, the will of the workers to free themselves." Got that? Essayas manages to combine the idea of movies (popular entertainment) and film (a much more deadly serious concept of the movies) in a way that is eccentric and engaging. Film insiders and hopeful film insiders just might love this movie. Yet as funny and eccentric as Eerma Wep is, it's still just a movie by a talented director about making a movie. If you like movies and are relaxed about "film," I think you'll enjoy it.

This DVD issue by Zeitgeist has a very good picture.

This movie has a casual, tossed-off feel, (it's rather different than Assayas' other pictures, which are hard to see in the U.S.) It's slyly funny about Parisians and their various neuroses and obsessions. Maggie Cheung is charming and, though she doesn't say much, she projects intelligence and good-natured resourcefulness. I disagree with the comments that this is a racist movie; rather it is about how the world is getting smaller and more multicultural. Worth a look for it's picture of contemporary filmmaking.

This film is a film lover's film. It uses documentary style filmmaking to narate it's slice of life relism, alongside the imaginative and transportative storymaking that gives this film many dimensions to explore, this is the most refreshing and modern foreign film you will see this year.

I recently discussed this film with my dad, whom I'd recommended it to very highly. He told me he found it so boring he'd turned it off halfway through. I suppose I can understand the sentiment, although I think Maggie is adorable throughout and, even though he's really decrepit and his English is almost unintelligible, I would watch Jean-Pierre Leaud read the yellow pages for two hours. But I told my father: YOU MUST RENT IT AGAIN AND WATCH THE ENDING. It literally took my breath away and it redefines Leaud's character in a heartbreaking way.

This film was a hit in New York. Many friends have recommended it to me as a somewhat irreverent, eccentric, and sometimes very funny movie. And Maggie Cheung once again shows that she is very versitile in any language. A must for fans of Maggie!

Maggie Cheung, as herself, comes to Paris to partake in a remake of Louis Feuillade's Les Vampires as Irma Vep. However, when Maggie arrives three days late to the set she finds a disorganized film company trying to hold together a group of actors, a crew, and filmmakers who all have different agendas. Nevertheless, Maggie tries her hardest to fit in, even though she does not speak any French, and she tries to get a good grip of the character that she intends to cast. Meanwhile, the director is having problems keeping himself emotionally together and the film's future becomes jeopardized. Irma Vep is an interesting film that portraits thoughts that are not followed through with or that cannot be followed through with unless they are organized.

Well, are we all sitty comfybold on our bottys? Then I'll begin.

Olivier Assayas is such a great director with such an astonishing body of work, that as good as Irma Vep is, it is not one of his best films.

It is good enough that you really should buy it, if you have not already. However, beyond that, in my typical whiny, frustration-driven way, I am going to spend the balance of this essay on things you (we) cannot yet buy in the hopes that one of the smaller and more rational DVD companies will rectify this. None of the following are even on video in France, at least based on the Amazon.com.fr website.

Une Nouvelle Vie is a brilliant character study. This film reconfirmed to me to the great and subtle talent of Judith Godreche, who has never let me down since. (Of course, I did not see the DiCaprio foolishness she was in because that would have broken the No-DiCaprios Allowed rule.) Ms. Godreche plays a complex and multi-layered character faced with a deepening mystery as she tries to find a father she has never known and is stalled by her half-sister and her father's lawyer who is apparently friendly, but clearly has some agenda of his own. The use of the camera is simply staggering. The camera circles the protagonists, alternating their points of view as the psychological games proceed. This same effect was so very irritating in Branagh's Frankenstein because there it served no purpose.

L'Eau Froide is a 60's period piece which introduced me to the work of Virginie Ledoyen. A simply plotted story of disaffected youth, which in less talented hands would have been cliched, is confidently and masterfully turned into something much more. This film also has what I feel to be the most effective (because it is so sparing) use of ambient period music I have ever experienced in a film - turning a great scene into an utterly ecstatic sequence. (The Big Chill indeed!!!!! Hmpf.)

Paris S'Eveille was my fortuitous introduction to, not only Ms. Godreche, but Mr. Assayas himself. The Walter Reade at Lincoln Center was running a series of films featuring Jean-Pierre Leaud. Having seen all of the more easily available films in the series, I chose I Hired a Contract Killer because it was directed by Aki Kaurismaki and Assayas' Paris S'Eveille because the music was written by John Cale. In fact, I had already had the bande sonore CD for a couple of years without knowing anything about the film. I'm sure I would have run into the work of Mr. Assayas eventually (probably, ironically, at The New York Film Festival where I saw Irma Vep) but this jump-started a cinematic passion that endures to this day.

Everything is relative. If you have not seen and do not own (anything worth seeing once is worth seeing twice - otherwise it is not worth seeing at all) Irma Vep then you owe it to yourself to make up for that loss. When you do, pay particular attention to Nathalie Richard. Even given the presence of Leaud and Maggie Cheung, Ms. Richard is the subtle heart of the film. I wish that more of her films were available here.

Irma Vep is a fictional behind-the-scenes film. Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung stars as Maggie Cheung, a Hong Kong actress starring in a French remake of an old silent film. The most interesting dynamic of this film are the interaction and tensions between these multiple layers. Cheung's character starts to have trouble differentiating between the role that she plays and reality. The director of the fictional French film chose the fictional Cheung because her previous Hong Kong work recommends her for the part; viewers of the film Irma Vep will also be influenced in what they think of the character because of films of the real-life Maggie Cheung (Super Cop) that they have presumably seen.

The main tension of the plot revolves around four main plot threads: the character Maggie Cheung seems to get too much into her Vampire-like cat burglar character, the formerly-great French director of the film seems to be going through a personal crisis and perhaps even a nervous breakdown, the rest of the crew--especially the assistant director--have trouble understanding the director's vision and the casting of Cheung in the lead role, and the costume director has a secret crush on Cheung. Irma Vep is an entertaining film about a film production that is in the process of unraveling under the strain of all of these tensions.

The film is interesting, but there are problems in the execution. I would have liked to have seen more of an exploration of the plot threads that I described above. The film sets up interesting situations, but then leaves the viewer dangling. In one scene the Maggie Cheung character tries out an act of burglary, but how does that relate to everything else going on in the film? Is it simply a case of Cheung getting too much into character or does this have something to do with Cheung's strange reluctance to talk about her previous film production which apparently also suffered problems? The lesbian crush subplot doesn't really go anywhere--after watching the costume designer's crush on Cheung throughout the film, this culminates in Cheung's embarassed giggling when she finds out about the crush. There seems to be some kind parallel between the ways that the Cheung character is magnetically attractive both to the costume designer and the director--maybe this even has something to do with the vampire-like attributes of the character that Cheung's character is playing, but again the film makers hint at this without developing it.

Overall I enjoyed the film. The open nature of the script allows different viewers to see different things. I can appreciate this, but I guess I would have like to have seen more of how these interesting situations played out rather than just settling for an interesting setup where the viewer can imagine what it means and where it will go.

"Irma Vep" is a 1996 cult classic about film and filmmaking written and directed by Olivier Assayas. It is a film for film buffs, which is its limitation. At the same time, it has a charming sense of humor not usually found in art house fare. Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung, playing herself, arrives in Paris a the request of director René Vidal (Jean-Pierre Léaud) to star in a remake of the 1915 silent French serial "Les Vampires". She is to play the leading role, that of Irma Vep, leader of a group of Parisian burglars who commit their crimes wearing black catsuits and hoods. The film's friendly costume designer Zoé (Nathalie Richard) gets Cheung fitted into her latex catsuit and makes her feel at ease. But the director's state of mind is not as stable.

When I saw the holes in René's shoes, I suspected this might turn out to be something fun. René is a has-been director whom his own crew thinks past his prime and perhaps a little touched in the head. His recreation of "Les Vampires" does nothing to disabuse them of that notion. Zoé doesn't like American films or the tendency of French directors to dwell in the past. Another crew member adores big Hollywood popcorn movies and disparages the French film industry for making films for themselves rather than for audiences. Maggie from Hong Kong is caught in the middle. René hates the dailies and might be having a nervous breakdown. And it's not clear why he would make a shot-for-shot remake of this old French classic -to him or to anyone else.

There is something delightfully realistic about the characters. Their minds are going off in different directions. René is losing his. Zoé is having sexual fantasies about Maggie in the catsuit and hopes the actress is game. Maggie understands her character a little too well when she puts on that costume and begins to have criminal impulses. All of this on a chaotic, low-budget movie set. It's funny. The characters are fun to watch. It's easy to understand René's inspiration to cast the Chinese Cheung as a Parisian burglar. Maggie is captivating and easy-going. She's the calm amid the chaos who lets everything wash over her, like the audience. In English and French with optional English subtitles.