IRMA VEP
| 2022 –  8 X 52′  – SERIES – COMEDY, DRAMA

Written by: Olivier Assayas, based on his own film IRMA VEP (1996).
Directed by: Olivier Assayas.
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Vincent Macaigne, Nora Hamzawi, Antoine Reinartz, Devon Ross, Jeanne Balibar, Vincent Lacoste, Alex Descas, Hippolyte Girardot, Lars Eidinger.
World Premiere Cannes International Film Festival 2022, Official Competition,
US Theatrical Premiere TAFFF 2022.
In French with English subtitles.
A HBO Max release. |

Olivier Assayas‘s eight-episode HBO mini-series, Irma Vep, is a playful remake of his own 1996 feature film, also called Irma Vep… which was about a film director intent on making a modern-day remake of Louis Feuillade’s 1915 eight-episode silent serial, Les Vampires. But the self-referential dimension doesn’t end there.  Because the director character in this series often refers to his own earlier remake of the film, with the Asian leading lady he subsequently married — referring, of course, to Maggie Cheung, the 1996 “Irma Vep” and Assayas’s former wife. Making the film not only uber-meta, but also somewhat autobiographical. The series is full of clips from both the Feuillade original and the 1996 film.  It’s full of discussions about art vs. “content”, the cinema vs. TV, and the future of moving pictures, in general.  It’s also a thoroughly entertaining, intelligent, witty, enormously charming behind-the-scenes film industry romp, laden with the prerequisite production catastrophes, eccentric talent, big egos and creative challenges. Alicia Vikander and Vincent Macaigne — both extraordinary here and clearly having a ball — lead an impeccable all-star cast in this clever, joyous homage to making movies the kooky, old-fashioned, indie way — with passion, ingenuity and a heaping measure of heart.

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