Irma Vep . Nashville Scene . 07-20-98

Irma Vep

DIRECTED BY: Olivier Assayas

REVIEWED: 07-20-98

This verit French comedy about a low-budget remake of Les Vampyrs alternates brittle comedy, piercing perception, and willful abstraction in a fashion that could almost be called Altman-esque, if Robert Altman's style weren't so distinctly American. Instead, Irma Vep draws on the peculiarities of the French character, gently mocking their national obsessions with fashion, cinema, and patriotism. The charismatic Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung stars as "herself"--an HK actress drafted to play the lead female vampire for an over-the-hill director with immense personal problems. The film is told largely from Cheung's point of view, as she deals with the insecure lesbian dresser who has a crush on her, tries to talk frankly with an oblivious TV interviewer, and takes direction from a crazy man who wants her to emulate Catwoman. The onscreen production soon goes into a tailspin, leading to a final, haunting image of Cheung on a film print that has been scratched and painted and chopped--an expression of one man's, and one country's, impossible, paranoid vision.

--Noel Murray

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