Irma Vep

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swo17
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Irma Vep

#1 Post by swo17 » Fri Feb 09, 2018 11:36 am

Irma Vep

UK-only release

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Ten years after he made his feature debut with Disorder in 1986, Olivier Assayas decided it was time to turn his attentions to the French film industry for his sixth picture. Written in ten days, and shot in less than a month, Irma Vep provides a mid-nineties' amalgam of François Truffaut's Day for Night and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore.

French filmmaker René Vidal (Day for Night's Jean-Pierre Léaud) is commissioned by a TV company to direct a remake of Louis Feuillade's classic silent-era serial, Les Vampires. Maggie Cheung (playing a version of herself) is cast in the central role and heads to Paris for filming – where she finds herself amid the chaos of artistic differences, petty rivalries and the immense egos which make up a film set.

Irma Vep is Assayas at his lightest and most playful – simultaneously a gently satirical dig at the state of French cinema and a love letter to his female star.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

• 2K restoration from the original negative, supervised and approved by Olivier Assayas
• High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
• Original 2.0 Stereo DTS-HD Master Audio
• Optional English subtitles
• Audio commentary by writer-director Olivier Assayas and critic Jean-Michel Frodon
On the Set of Irma Vep, a 30-minute behind-the-scenes featurette with optional commentary by Assayas and Frodon
• Interview with Assayas and critic Charles Tesson
• Interview with actors Maggie Cheung and Nathalie Richard
Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung, a 1997 short film by Assayas
• Black and white rushes
• Theatrical Trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Strain
• FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic Neil Young

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What A Disgrace
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Re: Irma Vep

#2 Post by What A Disgrace » Fri Feb 09, 2018 11:39 am

Day one purchase.

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bearcuborg
Joined: Fri Sep 14, 2007 2:30 am
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Re: Irma Vep

#3 Post by bearcuborg » Fri Feb 09, 2018 1:10 pm

What A Disgrace wrote:Day one purchase.
For the 3rd time...

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Irma Vep

#4 Post by zedz » Fri Feb 09, 2018 2:58 pm

Magnificent!

And that's a nice cover
SpoilerShow
that only people who have seen the movie will recognise as a spoiler

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senseabove
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:07 am

Re: Irma Vep

#5 Post by senseabove » Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:57 pm

This is very tempting, but I wonder if we can expect an equivalent US release in the near future, since there are no newly commissioned extras (except the essay, presumably). Looks like Zeitgeist, who released the US DVD in 2008, was the print/permissions source for a US screening late last year, and the previous DVD release was in 1998, so it would probably be safe to assume US rights were a 10-year block and are/will soon be up for grabs again?

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furbicide
Joined: Thu Dec 29, 2011 4:52 am

Re: Irma Vep

#6 Post by furbicide » Fri Feb 09, 2018 7:55 pm

I think we can all agree that Arrow does the best covers, right?

I already have this on DVD, but this is, indeed, tempting...

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Grand Wazoo
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2007 2:23 pm

Re: Irma Vep

#7 Post by Grand Wazoo » Fri Feb 09, 2018 8:21 pm

furbicide wrote:I think we can all agree that Arrow does the best covers, right?
*cough* Second Run...

Excited to see this one in HD.

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furbicide
Joined: Thu Dec 29, 2011 4:52 am

Re: Irma Vep

#8 Post by furbicide » Sat Feb 10, 2018 5:19 am

Oh yeah, love them too! But they have a design formula to fall back on – all of Arrow's look different and cool in their own way. The more DVDs from each company on my shelf, the better!

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Apperson
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Re: Irma Vep

#9 Post by Apperson » Wed Apr 11, 2018 6:06 am

Beaver

Looks fantastic!

Peter McM
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2012 7:11 am

Re: Irma Vep

#10 Post by Peter McM » Wed Apr 18, 2018 8:50 pm

zedz wrote:Magnificent!

And that's a nice cover
SpoilerShow
that only people who have seen the movie will recognize as a spoiler
Just like the original Planet of the Apes--showing the half-buried Statue of Liberty on the shore as cover art.

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DeprongMori
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Re: Irma Vep

#11 Post by DeprongMori » Sat Dec 29, 2018 5:48 pm

Irma Vep seems to be a Janus title as it just went up on their web page, with indication that it is available in Blu-ray. This might explain why the Arrow release was UK-only,

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Irma Vep

#12 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu May 21, 2020 11:26 pm

This was one of my first Assayas films probably like ten years ago, and I somehow hadn't watched it again since then until now. I've heard people name this as a good entrance to his oeuvre, and maybe that's true, but this really benefits from greater context. I think when I first saw the film I read it as more about the process of filmmaking, and I noticed Maggie Cheung's outlier as a non-French speaker, but didn't connect the themes of how we are isolated and disconnected and constantly finding ways to connect and bridge those gaps through resilient adaptation. Identity, and the spectrum of security of that identity, is an entryway to this process- yet Assayas offers a reading that fixed states are false senses of security while malleability is inherent in the state of existing as an isolated person in unfamiliar environments (which is a universal experience, on some level).

It's challenging to make a film where characters are speaking different languages, plotting, having personalized experiences coexisting in a space, and yet instead of suffocation we sense opportunities. Assayas creates an ultrasensory experience of hypervigilance that isn't anxious but calm and inviting. The party scene is so comforting despite the triggering reminders of similar memories I've had that were unbearably uncomfortable. This is thanks to Assayas' sensitive flowing camera that validates the beauty of each moment with narrative space, acknowledging impermanence and still standing his ground refusing to withdraw from its shadow. It's also due to Cheung, who doesn't oversell her performance, but her look is one of subtle wonder and tempered interest. She slides into a role of the invisible guest, people speaking French all around her as she sits quietly, and then in a subsequent scene embodies the part of invisibility as a cat burglar; from secluded stagnation to secluded action. Her isolation is empathized with, her humanity is relatable, and yet her role-playing and internalized performance is mysterious. She is both intensely human and enigmatic, switching roles between the two, just like the party scene into the stealth hotel prowling back into the interview the next day.

Nathalie Richard, whose role in Up, Down, Fragile is perhaps the best modern embodiment of nouvelle vague kittenish authenticity, steals every scene here. She helps make that party scene both inviting and dissociating in how her personal buzzed sexual desires cause an unintentional rift. This doesn't happen in the typical ways though, for instead of spoiling the pot with unwanted advances or rigid expectations, she herself is self-conscious and fantasizes with a friend while retreating back to shyly avoiding actually making a move. There is so much empathy in that scene for both her and Cheung for the same reason, despite their opposite positions of power in the room- they are both isolated with their own feelings that will go unconsummated due to restrictions in access. When we find out information about one of them later in the film, this is taken not as a fact that destroys the worth of the character, but simply another narrative or perspective that can be taken as truth or a 'version' of truth, and somehow has no influence on (at least my) emotions toward that person who has already been humanized.

At the same time, by the nature of the film's narrative that mimics Cheung and Leaud's unstable states of being, we are never able to fully align with any character's subjective corner. Assayas provides many intimate shots in close proximity of familiar emotions but the characters remain at a distance, objectified yet unmistakeably people. Or else 'characters' that emulate people pretty well. The filmmaking commentary to me stretches as far as that, simply put, being on a film set - including the gossip, interpersonal relationships, backroom dealings, power dynamics, hidden motives and role-shifting - is like a movie itself (and literally here). This isn't the first time this has been done, but never quite like this.

Irma Vep is always compared to Truffaut's Day For Night, which I 'get' but only superficially, because that film explored the process at face value. Assayas is interested in the experiences of coexisting, role-playing, and all the things we do every day in life, applied to the self-reflexive world of exaggerated opportunities to demonstrate the excitement in the banal. They literally get to 'act,' Cheung is in a completely different speaking-country engaging in adventures, and all the drama that occurs is heightened to movie-levels, while never seeming entirely inauthentic. That line is fine, like a late-movie scene where the stories about Richard cause Cheung to question an experience and run away; this scene is both theatrical due to the build up of circumstance, right out of a movie (well, yeah), and also something completely relatable and honestly not that out of the ordinary. Cheung's declaration in the car, "I understand Rene, it all makes sense to me now" feels like a lie. Assayas knows we don't "understand" one another, but he loves that we try and believe we can, which helps us get those moments where energy clicks and sparks fly in the space between people.

I don't entirely know what to make of the ending, other than to celebrate the definition of a successful film to be one that reinvents the possibilities of cinema to upend expectations and show us something new. I'm sure there is significance in the visual drawings over her body, that disrupt a clear picture of her and animate her talking, superpowers, body parts... objectification, unknowability, disintegration of identity into a role, I don't know. What I do know is that this film within a film, in a very different way, does what Assayas did with his film, as opposed to, say, Truffaut's. He explored a familiar narrative with a unique method, a fish-out-of-water drama with cryptic intentions, Rohmer-esque socializations without the catharsis or audience intuition, and generally universally applicable experiences in a foreign milieu of borderline truths and facades. I love the feeling of connecting to the nature of a human encounter in reflection of ourselves while straddling the line between artificiality and reality, because I am reminded of how we locate such sincerity as connotations from constructed means. Assayas unpacks cinema and anthropology together, using one another to inform the other, and it's genius.

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