From a screenplay written in ten days and shot in four weeks, this restlessly organic film is, like Truffaut`s Day For Night and Tom Dicillo`s Living In Oblivion, about the making of a film. Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung plays herself; she`s accepted the role of Irma Vep in a remake of Louis Feuillade`s silent serial Les Vampires. The career of the director Rene, played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, is in decline, and Maggie is confronted by the crew`s cynicism about the project from day one.
This is seemingly such a playful film, but in fact it has quite an edge; the documentary-style camera work pulls you in to this chaotic world in which the bitcheries, the ennui, the care and the carelessness of independent French filmmaking are exposed. Central to the film is Maggie Cheung - Assayas created the film for her, and she is just wonderful as a really decent professional person caught up in the mayhem of making a film, in an outfit inspired by Catwoman`s, with a seriously depressed director and a lesbian head of wardrobe who seriously fancies her...Nathalie Richard is terrific in this role.
This is exciting filmmaking, you sense the exhilaration with which Irma Vep was made, and an added bonus are scenes from the original Les Vampires. This film says something about the momentum of the filmmaking process, the achievements of a single vision and a single inspiration.... I like Irma Vep very much.
