Irma Vep

Cheung is employed to play the film-within-the-film's heroine, Irma Vep (an anagram for vampire), a burglar, who spends most of the film dressed in a tight, black, latex rubber catsuit, defending her director's odd choices to hostile crew members and journalists. As the film progresses, the plot mirrors the disorientation felt by the film's director. Cheung the character is in many ways seen by other characters as an exotic sex object dressed in a latex catsuit; both the director and Cheung's costume designer Zoe (Nathalie Richard) have crushes on her.

The film makes reference to iconic figures in French film history: Louis Feuillade, Musidora, Arletty, François Truffaut, the Groupe SLON, Alain Delon, and Catherine Deneuve. Thematically, the film questions the place of French cinema today. It is not a "mourning for cinema with the romantic nostalgia" but "more like the Mexican Day of the Dead: remembrance as an act of celebration,"[3] so that "It is less a film about re-presenting the past, than it is a film about addressing the present, specifically the place of France within the global economy."[4]

• Maggie Cheung as Herself
• Jean-Pierre Léaud as René Vidal
• Nathalie Richard as Zoé
• Antoine Basler as Journalist
• Nathalie Boutefeu as Laure
• Alex Descas as Desormeaux
• Dominique Faysse as Maïté
• Arsinée Khanjian as L'américaine
• Bernard Nissile as Markus
• Olivier Torres as Ferdinand and Moreno
• Bulle Ogier as Mireille
• Lou Castel as José Mirano
• Jacques Fieschi as Roland
• Estelle Larrivaz as La standardiste
• Balthazar Clémenti as Robert, assistant

The idea for the film was born out of an attempted collaboration among Assayas, Claire Denis, and Atom Egoyan, who wanted to experiment with the situation of a foreigner in Paris. In the 1915 original serial, written and directed by Louis Feuillade, Irma Vep was played by French silent film actress Musidora (1889–1957). Much of the film depicts set-related incidents that echo scenes in Truffaut's La nuit americaine (English title: Day for night), to which Irma Vep owes a large thematic debt.

However, Assayas publicly stated that although he considers La nuit americaine a great film, it is more about the fantasy of filmmaking than the reality. Assayas credits Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore as a greater inspiration.

Assayas married Cheung in 1998. They divorced in 2001. They again collaborated in 2004 on the film Clean.

Irma Vep received a positive critical reaction. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 93% from 41 critics.[5]

Lettrist footage from the film, along with shots from the original Les Vampires, are used in White Ring's video for their single IxC999.

A character in the 5-comic series "Anno Dracula - 1895: Seven Days in Mayhem" by Kim Newman and Paul McCaffrey.

Irma Vep is scheduled to be released on Blu-ray and DVD through The Criterion Collection on April 27, 2021.[6]

• Louis Feuillade, director of the original serial film Les vampires (1915–1916)
• The Mystery of Irma Vep, a 1984 play for two characters by Charles Ludlam
• Lettrism, inspiration for some sequences of the film

• Irma Vep at IMDb
• Irma Vep at AllMovie
• Irma Vep at Rotten Tomatoes
• Irma Vep at Box Office Mojo