IRMA VEP - BLU-CRITERION COLLECTION

Details

• Release Year: 1997
• Genre: Comedy, Drama
• Plot: Olivier Assayas’s live-wire international breakthrough stars a magnetic Maggie Cheung as a version of herself: a Hong Kong action-movie star who arrives in Paris to play the latex-clad lead in a remake of Louis Feuillade’s classic silent crime serial Les vampires. What she finds is a behind-the-scenes tangle of barely controlled chaos as egos clash, romantic attractions simmer, and an obsessive director (a cannily cast Jean-Pierre Léaud) drives himself to the brink to realize his vision. Blending blasts of silent cinema, martial-arts flicks, and the music of Sonic Youth and Luna into a hallucinatory swirl of postmodern cool, Assayas composes in Irma Vep a witty critique of the nineties French film industry and the perennial tension between art and commercial entertainment.
• Cast: Maggie Cheung, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Nathalie Richard, Antoine Basler, Nathalie Boutefeu, Alex Descas, Dominique Faysse, Arsinée Khanjian, Bernard Nissile, Olivier Torres, Bulle Ogier, Lou Castel, Jacques Fieschi, Estelle Larrivaz, Balthazar Clémenti, Lara Cowez, Dominique Cuny, Jessica Doyle, Sandra Faure, Catherine Ferny, Maryel Ferraud, Filip Forgeau, Nicolas Giraudin, Valerie Guy, Laurent Jacquet, Philippe Landoulsi, Smaïl Mekki, Maurice Najman, Yann Richard, Jérôme Simonin, Alexandra Yonnet, Pierre Amzallag, Françoise Clavel, Françoise Guglielmi, Odile Horion, François-Renaud Labarthe, Alain Martin, Guy-Patrick Sainderichin, Willy Martin, Olivier Assayas
• Director: Olivier Assayas
• Runtime: 1:39
• Company: Dacia Films, Canal+, MK2, Janus Films, The Criterion Collection
• Media Format: Movie