Irma Vep (2022)
dir. Olivier Assayas
Rated: TV-MA
image: ©2022 A24
Les Vampires (1915-1916)
dir. Louis Feuillade
Rated: N/A
image: ©1915 Gaumont
It all started with an innocent enough question from my wife. She had no way of knowing when she asked it that the answer would lead to the both of us falling down a rabbit hole of cinema. (She’s been with her movie-obsessed partner long enough, though, to know that’s always a possibility. She knew who she was marrying!)
The two of us are always on the lookout for new shows we think the other would enjoy and that we can watch and discuss as we work our way through it together. Last fall, she mentioned a title she had been seeing on HBO Max for a few months – soulless media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery, which now owns HBO, recently rebranded the streaming service to the obnoxiously titled Max.
“Do you know anything about this Irma Vep?”
“Only a little. It’s based on a movie from the ‘90s and the same guy who made the movie also made the limited series. His name is Olivier Assayas. I’ve never seen the movie…”
(With feigned exasperation in her voice): “I assume that means we’re going to have to watch the movie first if we’re going to watch the show, right?”
“I mean, that’s what I would do, but we don’t have to…” (I’ve learned enough over our 13-year relationship to let the game come to me, at least some of the time.)
(After an incalculably long and exaggerated eyeroll): “Fine. We’ll watch the movie first.”
Olivier Assayas’s critically acclaimed 1996 satire of the French film industry, Irma Vep, is a deeply meta and self-reflexive meditation on artistic obsession, the herculean effort that is filmmaking, and the intoxicating pursuit of creating something transcendent. It’s also an irreverent homage to an icon of French film history.
The plot concerns a director, René Vidal, and his attempts to film a remake of Les Vampires, the 417-minute silent serial crime drama – it was released in ten episodes over the course of seven months during 1915-1916 – directed by Louis Feuillade.
Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung plays a fictionalized version of herself in the film Irma Vep. (Cheung and Assayas later married in 1998; in 2001, they divorced.) Within the film, Cheung is starring in the remake of Les Vampires as Irma Vep, the hypnotic burglar and spy who acts as the muse for the criminal syndicate known as the Vampires. (The character name is an anagram for vampire.)
A character within Irma Vep explains that these criminals aren’t actually mythical bloodsuckers; they took the name as a way to strike fear in the hearts of their enemies and society-at-large.
It was the point when this explanation was delivered that Rae asked me to pause the movie.
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. So, this Vampires thing is a real thing?”
(While opening my preferred resource for such enquiries, Wikipedia, on my phone): “I know nothing about it, but, yes, Les Vampires, directed by Louis Feuillade in 1915, does appear to be a real thing.”
“And this Assayas guy made a movie about a guy remaking it?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s not based on a true story, right? There’s no real person who remade Les Vampires?”
“Correct. The story of Irma Vep is completely fictional.”
“And then he remade his own movie about a fictional guy remaking Les Vampires as a limited series?”
“That is correct.”
“But there are no actual vampires in Les Vampires. That’s just what they call themselves.”
“That does appear to be the case, yes.”
“Ok… Ok…” (Getting back to Assayas): “Why would anyone want to do such a thing?”
“…Art?”
“Huh. We’re going to end up watching Les Vampires, aren’t we?”
“I mean… we don’t have to?”
We didn’t end up watching Les Vampires. At least, we didn’t on our first run through the limited series version of Irma Vep. It was Rae who ended up suggesting it. I swear. You can ask her. When we finished the show, we were both fairly blown away by its scope and the quirky nature of the storytelling.
In the 1996 movie, part of what Assayas is exploring is how an outsider (the character version of Cheung) sees the French film industry. In the 2022 series, we have a different outsider. Hollywood movie star Mira Harberg – played with endless nuance by the beguiling Alicia Vikander – is desperate to shed her current public persona as a superhero movie megastar.
Mira wants to focus on projects that have, to her mind, more artistic merit. It’s why she was drawn to director René Vidal’s idiosyncratic project, despite his reputation for being a mercurial presence on set. (In the series, René is played to neurotic and volatile perfection by Vincent Macaigne. I have to imagine the fact that, in addition to being an actor, Macaigne is also a theatre and film director, as well as being a screenwriter and playwright, added to the authenticity of the performance in Assayas’s estimation.)
Much of the appeal for me of both the movie and series versions of Irma Vep is in Assayas’s capturing of how chaotic shooting a movie (or series) can be. A good deal of the plot involves the crew of the film – mostly the long-suffering costume designer, Zoe – trying to keep one of the costars of the Les Vampires remake out of trouble.
Gottfried, a German actor who struggles with a heroin addiction (although, it’s highly doubtful that he would describe it as a struggle) is a loose cannon (to put it mildly) who threatens to derail the production with his antics. One of those antics is a trip to the hospital after his attempt at autoerotic asphyxiation goes wrong. Actor Lars Eidinger gives Gottfried a wily and irrepressible energy. He steals any scene in which he appears. The tirade that Gottfried launches into at his wrap party about the decline of movies as a radical art form is inspired.
Over the course of the series, René, because of myriad disagreements over his vision for the film – and, he insists, it IS a film, not a TV show, because the original Les Vampires was released as a serial FILM – has explosive confrontations with two of his actors. He also loses all confidence in his abilities and disappears from the set for days, causing the production company to hire a replacement. The replacement is dating Mira’s ex-girlfriend (and ex-assistant), which causes for some awkward encounters. Everyone soldiers on, however, because as fractious and unstable as the conditions surrounding the production are, everyone, in their own way, is committed to getting the director’s vision onto the screen.
Assayas also injects magical realism – as his did in his original film version – into Irma Vep when Mira begins to feel that the legendary character’s sprit is inhabiting her. I won’t go into too much detail, but this mystical transformation leads to Mira walking through walls when she puts on her character’s iconic black cat suit, which is modeled on the original Les Vampires costume design.
Layered into the depiction of René’s troubled production are numerous sequences of the finished product. Assayas’s cinematographers, Yorick Le Saux and Denis Lenoir, give these film-within-a-film moments a completely different look than the rest of the series. It’s both haunting and lush, with a spooky atmosphere that renders René’s vision gorgeous and intoxicating.
Assayas doesn’t stop there in adding elements to his opus. Included in the 10-part series are a few sequences purported to be taken from the diary of the actress who played Irma Vep in Feuillade’s Les Vampires. These sequences reveal the silent-era director as unscrupulous in his methods to get exactly the shot he wanted. In one, we see him intentionally withhold information about a dangerous explosives stunt from his performers, to ensure that they do as they are told. Another showcases Feuillade’s fast and loose safety standards involving a scene with a gun.
Seeing these examples of Feuillade abusing his power lends extra weight to a sequence midway through the series. One of the actors in René’s remake has reservations about a sequence that can be read as a rape scene. René is incensed that anyone would suggest an alteration to Feuillade’s masterpiece. The juxtaposition of Feuillade in the diary sequences and René, a century later, make it hard to avoid the conclusion that, although much has changed, abuse of power by those at the top is essentially the same as it ever was.
As if all this weren’t enough, Assayas also indulges in including extended passages of the original Les Vampires within Irma Vep. Seeing the original allows us to appreciate René’s loving, if misguided, attempt to recreate one of his obsessions. (It also served to make me even more interested in catching up with Feuillade’s original.) Since Assayas is essentially satirizing himself through the character of René – the series is a good deal funnier than I’ve made it sound here – I have to assume the Irma Vep director felt helpless in succumbing to showing off a piece of art that he clearly adores.
Including scenes from the original also allows us to see the mystique of the lead in that film first hand. The woman who played Irma Vep in the 1915-1916 serial, Musidora (born Jeanne Roques), is hypnotic in the role. She turns in a mesmerizing performance at a time when filmmakers were still figuring out the grammar of their medium.
In addition to being an actress, Musidora was also a writer and film director; she was wildly popular and famous in France during her time. If nothing else, I appreciate Assayas’s obsession because it made me aware of a wonderful talent that’s been obscured by the passage of time. Alicia Vikander does a superb job and is a worthy successor to both Musidora and Maggie Cheung in the iconic role. Assayas gives us a recreation of a famous dance from Musidora in the original, and Vikander makes the sequence utterly beguiling.
Watching the ten episodes of Les Vampires alongside Irma Vep’s eight installments gave me a greater appreciation of both. One of my favorite discoveries in Les Vampires was something Assayas almost completely ignores in Irma Vep. The character Oscar-Cloud Mazamette – played with an impish grin by Marcel Lévesque – is a delight. Mazamette is a reformed ex-vampire who is helping investigative journalist Philippe Guérande in his efforts to bring down the Vampire cabal.
Mazamette is the only character who breaks the fourth wall, often giving a sly glance to the audience when he comes up with a plan. (There is one other character that briefly acknowledges the audience, and it’s Mazamette’s son, Eustache.) Lévesque’s performance feels like an artist fusing vaudeville and the (at the time) emerging art of filmmaking; he’s playing with form in a way that feels fresh and untested.
There are also thrilling stunts throughout Les Vampires in a time before stunt performers. We see actors in character scaling the sides of buildings and rolling down a massive flight of stairs in a crate. Assayas makes it clear that not all of these stunts were engaged in consensually, but it’s impossible to deny their impact on the screen.
Olivier Assayas has created a spellbinding work that pays homage to cinema’s foundational roots, while also blazing a trail for the future of engaging, engrossing storytelling. He highlights a cultural artifact of cinema that I otherwise might have missed, and for that, I’m grateful.
Les Vampires
Irma Vep (2022)
Why it got 4/4.5 stars:
- Both Les Vampires and Irma Vep are fascinating watches. Taken together, they are nothing short of a glimpse into cinema’s infancy and its future.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- If anybody out there is interested in taking the complete journey, here is my suggestion on how to tackle it:
Irma Vep (1996)
Irma Vep (2022): The Severed Head
Les Vampires: The Severed Head
Les Vampires: The Ring That Kills
Irma Vep (2022): The Ring That Kills
Les Vampires: The Red Codebook
Irma Vep (2022): Dead Man’s Escape
Les Vampires: The Spectre
Irma Vep (2022): The Poisoner
Les Vampires: Dead Man’s Escape
Irma Vep (2022): Hypnotic Eyes
Les Vampires: Hypnotic Eyes
Irma Vep (2022): The Thunder Master
Les Vampires: Satanas
Irma Vep (2022): The Spectre
Les Vampires: The Thunder Master
Irma Vep (2022): The Terrible Wedding
Les Vampires: The Poisoner
Les Vampires: The Terrible Wedding
- Shout out to A24, which produced the Irma Vep series.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- The movie version of Irma Vep is currently available to stream on both Max and The Criterion Channel. The series Irma Vep is also currently available to stream on Max. Although it’s not currently available to stream, there are various physical-media releases available of Les Vampires. The most recent is a Kino International release, remastered from a Cinémathèque Française 35mm film restoration. It’s available on both DVD and Blu-ray. I was able to check out the DVD from my local library.