“Irma Vep”: a strange and tricky series in which everything is not what it seems

Director Olivier Assayas is literally obsessed with French classics. Vampires (1915) Louis Feuillade. So much so that in 1996 he dared to make a remake with the name of one of his characters, Irma Vep. The film did not become the high point of the director’s curious career, but it is he who analyzes and delves into the personality. Now Assayas himself returns to the fight to delve into his premise and ideas in the HBO Max series of the same name. Argument? The story of an actress who becomes part of the cast of the Assayas remake. A kind of endless cycle that surprises with its effectiveness and tells a similar story – bordering on the absurd – with subtlety and grace.

Series Irma Vep HBO Max has the exuberant, understated vitality of Assayas’ 1996 film, but it’s no homage. In fact, this is an unfinished and brilliant excursion into the codes of cinematic heritage and author’s obsessions. But instead of going for pure exaggeration, Assayas chooses a metanarrative to delve into the topic. The result is a mirror in which Assayas – and all the characters in his production – are in dialogue with themselves. A trick that we’ve seen very often this year that always involves risk in some way.

AT Resurrection of the Matrix, Lana Wachowski failed to create a dialogue between her work and the perception of it. Assayas manages to downplay the likely symbolic power of his film and focus on a certain revisionist atmosphere. What is – or was – Irma Vep? A remake, a reconstruction of a cinematic myth? Or, better yet, a copy of something more complex that he can never replicate? Assayas makes fun of himself, pulls tricks and plots tricks. It combines the concepts of good and evil, quality, transcendence, and cinematography into a single, slightly blurry look. “Irma Vep” – the series – conducts a kind of mysterious dialogue with the center of the mythology of cinema, which is supported by its weight.

Hall of Mirrors created by Assayas

How to cover classic? Sentence the same question is asked, but with respect to Godfather. And he focuses his efforts on explaining the impact and importance of the most auteur violent film in the history of cinema. But Assayas doesn’t make it that easy. Actually analyze and dig into something more complex, mysterious and dark. Who is Irma Vep? Production? Experiment? What is this series that asks questions about her in the vein of pop culture curiosity?

In fact, Assayas decides that the best way to tell the story of this matryoshka doll is through satire. Refined, swirling and at times dark. Or is it not? Actually, Irma Vep HBO Max appears to be taking a huge experimental risk. A cross between a Louis Feuillade work that is a century away and an Assayas film that has become a minor cult work. The series is a transition between them. At the same time, it’s an assessment of how the story has evolved before delving into how it’s done today. Cinema develops due to its internal mobility, and the Irma Vep series raises the question of what currents cause these transformations.

At the center of this whole World (Alicia Vikander), gliding between sophisticated eloquence and stony coldness. Mira plays the entire star system. The actress plays, of course, an actress who has just hit the big time in the superhero genre. And now he wants to play something more serious – or enough authorial and independent – to capitalize on his feat. But who finds intention has a complex relationshipstrange and luxurious cinema as a phenomenon, not as a spectacle.

Irma Vep it is based on the oneiric quality of being part of a reimagining of a seminal work of cinema. And that’s when Assayas plays his best cards. The most complex and mysterious. Nicolas Cage succeeded The Unbearable Weight of a Huge Talent Tom Gormican asks questions about cinema. On the other hand, Irma Vep does it on the texture of cinematic reality. The show ups the ante from the actor who plays himself to the director who asks himself questions out of derision.. And the result is a deft collection of anecdotes and obsessions about art that the series doesn’t answer but deftly raises.

Crazy fame and other lessons of Irma Vep

Curious, Irma Vep HBO Max doesn’t seem to have any intentions other than derision. Or, at least in its first four chapters, the series struggles with a tangle of half-solved ideas. All in all, it makes her brilliant, smart, and formally flawless. Also, an important journey on why cinema is the formal expression of the world. So this time metanarrative is not just a story through codes. It’s also a great look at the power of what’s told – and how it’s done – over time.

At their highest points Irma Vep trapped In the bottom a curious event. Between both things, the idea of ​​fiction depends on beauty, time, and the state of power to look beyond ordinary symbols. In short, Irma Wep wants to make a version of cinema as a language. Or make it more mysterious. And sometimes it is.