Irma Vep
Irma Vep
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1h 39m
Directed by Olivier Assayas • 1996 • France
Starring Maggie Cheung, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Nathalie Richard
Olivier Assayas’s live-wire international breakthrough stars a magnetic Maggie Cheung as a version of herself: a Hong Kong action movie star who arrives in Paris to play the latex-clad lead in a remake of Louis Feuillade’s classic 1915 crime serial LES VAMPIRES. What she finds is a behind-the-scenes tangle of barely controlled chaos as egos clash, romantic attractions simmer, and an obsessive director (a cannily cast Jean-Pierre Léaud) drives himself to the brink to realize his vision. Blending blasts of silent cinema, martial arts flicks, and the music of Sonic Youth and Ali Farka Touré into a hallucinatory swirl of postmodern cool, Assayas composes a witty reflection on the nineties French film industry and the eternal tension between art and commercial entertainment.
Up Next in Irma Vep
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Olivier Assayas on IRMA VEP
The following interview with director Olivier Assayas was recorded in January 2021.
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Olivier Assayas and Charles Tasson on...
In the following interview, recorded in 2003, director Olivier Assayas and critic Charles Tesson discuss their love of Asian cinema, their visit to Hong Kong in 1984, and how Maggie Cheung came to star in IRMA VEP.
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Maggie Cheung and Nathalie Richard on...
In this 2003 interview, actors Maggie Cheung and Nathalie Richard recall the making of IRMA VEP.