Irma Vep.

Back in November, Glenn Kenny compared and contrasted Irma Vep, out now in a "splendid, new DVD edition" from Zeitgeist, with Day for Night: "Truffaut's film is largely about moviemaking as a microcosm for life itself, while Vep is largely about the cinema (and the cinema icon) as a cynosure of desire." He noted, too, a connection with "Rainer Werner Fassbinder's acidly funny 1971 Beware of a Holy Whore," namely, Lou Castel. Now, Glenn has a good long talk Olivier Assayas.

"Drawn in by 'the radiance she exuded through her beauty and sovereignty,' [Assayas] made Irma Vep (1996), the filmic host for René's [Jean-Pierre Léaud] doomed remake, as both a study of persona and a love letter to a genuine star - and he wrote the above quoted homage before [Maggie] Cheung became his wife." Josef Braun:

Updated through 12/15.

"Such a guiding principal, a cinema of transcendent fascination with feminine image and being, aligns Irma Vep with the French New Wave and Jean-Luc Godard's celluloid adoration of Anna Karina, and with the cinema's earliest feats of actress-director collaborations, such as those of Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich. This is very much in keeping with Assayas's approach overall, flush as it is with the buzzy life of film sets, with its effervescent brio, with Assayas's willingness to invoke and reinvent aspects of the movies in order to find his own voice. Irma Vep is among the most pleasurable works of cinephile cinema."

"Not unlike Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express, Assayas' breathless and supercool movie was made as a break between more ambitious (and duller) projects, and he employs a similar garage-band style of moviemaking: pick up the equipment and don't look back." Michael Atkinson for IFC:

[Cheung's] most triumphant scene, and the film's creepy, mysterious heart, has Cheung attempting to connect with her role as the night-lurker Vep by going on a midnight prowl across the Paris rooftops alone, stalking through the shadows and down hotel corridors in skin-tight black leather and heels, eavesdropping on strangers and even thieving their jewelry. It's mesmerizing - a visual bridge of urban anxiety and poeticized voyeurism - and because Cheung is so sympathetic, it's suspenseful, too. Soon thereafter, Léaud's meta-Godard is replaced by Lou Castel's laconic meta-Chabrol, and the entire affair explodes into a visualized seizure, the literal effect of movie-drunk psychosis on celluloid. Kudos across the board.

"One thing in common with many of Olivier Assayas's films is the bumping of cultures and languages in the jet-hopping global stew of a modern world," notes Kurt Halfyard at Twitch. "Irma Vep mixes in cultural appropriation, recycling of icons and even some sexual confusion into the mix to form one of the most satisfying satires in years."

Update, 12/15: Eugene Kotlyarenko for Interview: "Irma Vep borders on a collage film, collecting scenes from the original Les Vampires, footage from Cheung's real, action-packed Hong Kong past, dailies from the Assayas's shoot, video from a hilarious on-set publicity interview with Maggie, an excerpt from a vintage French political film, and an experimental rough cut, all mixed with what one might call 'the actual film.' The complete film holds together wonderfully, due to Assayas' incessantly fluid camera, which moves between different crewmembers - on sets, during dinner, and at raves - with a whimsical dexterity, reminiscent of Altman's best."

Posted by dwhudson at December 9, 2008 2:23 PM