Rent Irma Vep on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Olivier Assayas
Directed by: Olivier Assayas
Starring: Maggie Cheung, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Nathalie Richard
Rated: NR [R]
Watch the trailer
Plot
Hong Kong starlet Maggie Cheung arrives in France to portray Irma Vep in a remake of Les Vampires (1915), but the production is plagued by behind-the-scenes intrigues.
Verdict
This delves behind the camera to show how movies are, or are not, made but this feels like a movie based on a story someone overheard. It ended and I thought, 'That's it?' I'm going to assume I need to have a broad knowledge of French cinema to enjoy this. I don't, and I didn't.
Skip it.
Review
Assayas remade this into a mini-series in 2022. I'm not sure how this would be stretched to eight episodes, but I also feel like I need to be more aware of French cinema history to really understand this movie so maybe the mini-series is more accessible. Either way this movie doesn't make me want to start binging the mini-series.
It's a movie within a movie where director René (Jean-Pierre Léaud) wants to recreate a 1915 French serial. Maggie Cheung plays a fictionalized version of herself, cast in the lead role as a cat burglar Irma Vep. While it's an anagram of vampire, she's not actually a vampire.
 |
| Maggie Cheung plays Irma Vep |
Often when we get a story about how a movie is made, you wonder how movies ever get made. René is remaking a silent film, but doesn't want to adapt it for the modern day, leaving it in black and white and silent. That seems like a questionable decision at best. This has to be a jab at 'artistic' directors. René's attempt at being an auteur is achieved by changing nothing and just copying the source material. The cast and crew watch the first dailies and René hates it. As someone on the crew asks, this has already been done, why do it again? Tensions run high between the costume department and the production designer as well.
Maggie dons the suit one night and actually infiltrates an apartment and robs someone. That has to be a jab at method acting. When she's later doing an interview the journalist complains about French film and the attempt to be intellectual. It seems like he's talking about this film, but Maggie is gracious and refuses to denigrate the film.
René leaves the production and the new director meets with Maggie, telling her he intends to replace her. Maggie leaves the next day to do a movie with Ridley Scott. It's a great exit as we wonder what the future of this production will be. This concludes with an edit of the footage already shot which isn't much and not very impressive.
This takes a lot of jabs at movie making and I'm guessing French cinema, but it was never funny or dramatic. It's the typical issues on set.
No comments :
Post a Comment