Irma Vep

This unexpected masterpiece was assembled so quickly that it has an improvisational feel and a surrealist capacity to access its own unconscious—traits it shares with Feuillade's work. Read full review

A funny and fascinatingly open-ended look at the state of the art, Irma Vep is well worth a look. Read full review

The film is a true torchbearer of the French New Wave—playful, restless, full of invention, and born of an overwhelming discontent for the status quo. Read full review

Slinky, smart and funny, Irma Vep doesn't send up that sticky-sweet incense smell you usually get in movies about the joy of cinema-with-a-capital-C. It's a languorous love ballad, and a daring one, about the way moving pictures move, the way they hold light, the way they steal from us when we're not looking. Read full review

Olivier Assayas's Irma Vep is a spicy, propulsive, invigorating paradox - a French film of great gusto about the exhaustion of French film culture. Written in 10 days and shot in four weeks with a very busy Super 16mm camera, it looks and plays as breathlessly as its on-the-fly circumstances. [27 July 1997, p.C8]

Irma Vep is over before you know it, which is both a tribute to the talents of Assayas - he draws you in completely, his film never lags - and a bummer. You want to follow these people around a little longer, see what happens to their movie (although we do get to see something that happens, and it's weird and dazzling) and what becomes of them all. This a film about thievery - the character of Irma Vep is a jewel thief, the director is stealing from the past - and in its own very cool, very brash way, Irma Vep steals its audience's heart. [13 June 1997, p.10]

If the rare vitality and wit of Irma Vep weren't enough to shake jaded viewers in their seats, its climactic blast of optically enhanced images will. The only new world Assayas is prepared to accept is a brave one. In and out of film, that's the only kind to pursue. [13 June 1997, p.32]

Irma Vep is a glorious mishmash, like the medium it celebrates.

Movies about moviemaking usually fall into one of two categories: ones that satirize or debunk the film industry or ones that celebrate it. Irma Vep, a sometimes dazzling French film by writer-director Olivier Assayas, does both. [13 June 1997, p.I]

The post-modern compulsions on display here may bring movies together, but they also keep people apart. Irma Vep is a picture of missed connections and tenuous relationships, most touchingly in the scenes between Cheung and Zoe (Nathalie Richard), her smitten costume designer. Read full review

Are French films stuffy? At times, yes, and that's one of many reasons why even the most "accessible" French movies are relegated to art cinemas in this country. Irma Vep gleefully defies such facile labeling, however. This is a sly, sexy endeavor that presents its audacious viewpoint with style and intelligence. Irma Vep features some wonderful performances (notably those of Cheung, Leaud, and Richard), that, in concert with its sure direction and smart script, make for a wholly satisfying motion picture. Read full review

A delightfully nonchalant movie, complete with some nice satirical barbs aimed at contemporary French film culture, and fine performances throughout. Read full review

Cheung, slinking around the corridors of her hotel in her sheath of shiny black latex to the dissonant chords of Sonic Youth, is an instant icon of everything. Read full review

Bizarre and beautiful, this French take on the madness inherent in independent filmmaking rivals Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion as the most realistic depiction of the myriad trials and tribulations that accompany the creation of a new film. Read full review

The 42-year-old Assayas demonstrates an assured light touch here, drawing expert comic performances from Cheung, Richard and Ogier while using a 16mm hand-held camera to lend the film a live, experimental quality. It dovetails neatly with a surreal and quite hilarious ending that carries the technique - and Vidal's cinematic pretensions - to their logical conclusion. [26 Sept 1997]

Irma Vep blurs the line between reality and fantasy, toys with notions of identity and offers a playfully jaundiced look at the petty jealousies and acts of sabotage that infect film crews in the heat of production. Read full review

A minor but witty entry on the exceptionally strong slate of French films at the New York Film Festival this year. Read full review

A slender but appealing divertissement about a has-been auteur attempting to remake the French silent classic "Les Vampires," the film's wry digs at the institution of Gallic art movies and at the anarchic confusion of the filmmaking process should amuse hip fest audiences. Read full review

An overpraised yet amusing satire. Read full review

Assayas displays an intimate, informal style and a sharp sense of proportion that allows him to have some fun, score some points and then wrap it all up before overstaying his welcome. Irma Vep is as effortless as a shrug and boasts a film buff’s dream cast. Read full review

Art isn't always supposed to be user-friendly. But it should at least be provocative, making you contemplate a piece on several levels. This, at least, is where Irma Vep is successful. [25 July 1997, p.28]

Ultimately, Irma Vep doesn't quite have the courage of its convictions, but still provides plenty of scathing satire on the state of French cinema. Read full review

But its behind-the-scenes satire of the peccadilloes of "serious" French filmmaking eventually turns downright pedantic, while the backstage intrigue (much of it hinging on a female staffer's romantic designs on Maggie) is surprisingly tame. [25 July 1997, p.L31]