Irma Vep: Only To Please Yourself

A commentary on the state of the French film, Irma Vep challenges the industry and tries to diagnose its problem. The movie mostly follows Maggie Cheung playing herself on the set of a French remake of Les Vampires. Immediately, we are set up to see the industry from an outside view. We are foreigners as much as Cheung on set, which makes her our surrogate throughout the film.

Cheung is constantly interrogated by insiders and outsiders about the director’s ability and intentions. When Cheung and the director, Rene Vidal first meet he expresses his concern over creating a remake of such an old film. Vidal himself questions the creative motive for making his film. Cheung is then taken out to lunch by the costume designer Zoe, who grills Cheung about her intentions in being in the film. She repeats Cheung after she says “used to be very good.” Zoe also laments about the lost causes of the French film industry saying “why do we do whats already been done?” It’s hard not to connect the two statements as both being directly about French cinema. This is reinforced late in the film when Cheung is interviewed about French films. When she says that she liked Vidal’s previous film, the interviewer laughs at her telling her it’s boring, “typical of French cinema.” The interviewer defines typical French cinema as film to only please yourself, movies that are not for the public. Bourgeois filmmaking is over he thinks, or hopes, as it “has killed the industry.” A lot of characters echo this same sentiment throughout the film, hoping for more realistic films. This all in a film that seems almost like a documentary, that focuses on the characters rather than the film within the film. Irma Vep is against the artificiality of such films.

The film is also about the “Group” as one, as many of the films we’ve watched have been. It is a look into how a group who has a singular goal can fail miserably. There are many factors playing into the failure: lust, disrespect, a lack of a clear motive. The director and Zoe both have crushes on Cheung, which places her in the unfortunate position of having to contend with both of them. This breaks trust between her and the foreign crew which pushes her away from the film. It does not help that rumors are floating around the set making Zoe more uncomfortable and more upset with her job. This plays into the disrespect the crew has for the director, and the director has for the film. Even though everyone is working towards completing the film, a lot of the crew doesn’t believe in the concept and premise, which stems from the lack of a clear motive. Vidal does not believe in his movie, so why would the crew? The crew constantly combating with the director throws him into a mental break which makes him leave the set altogether. These three factors swirl to dismantle the remake from the inside out.