The Imitation Game: a review of the "Irma Vep" series
The main postmodern series of the summer, a drama about the intertwining of film and life, the two most important (and funniest) of the arts.
A remake of the 1996 Olivier Assayas film of the same name. Hollywood actress Mira Harberg (Alicia Vikander) is invited to star in a new version of the French TV series Vampires. This entails a series of comical and even phantasmagoric situations from which not everyone involved in the process will get out.
One of this year's major meta-projects, "Irma Vep" was screened for the first time outside of the Cannes competition, the traditional parade of glamour that often has little to do with cinema. Participation in the event confirmed not only the far-reaching intentions of the series, but also its esoteric-ironic essence, an intricate Cinephile mythology that inexplicably penetrates the minds of unprepared audiences, infusing them with unpredictable conversations about cinematic goals, content, creator-artists, their ambitions and desires. Assayas reconnects reality with fantasy, the present with the past, changes the future on the fly, and gently sneers at the creative creeps of every idealist who admires cinema and its supposed healing power.
"Irma Vep" (an anagram of the word "vampire") is the mysterious, almost unattainable, demonic constant that Vikander's character tries on. Mira has just finished starring in a major blockbuster and has separated from the popular director. Being in contemplation about the upcoming round of his career, the girl goes to Paris in the territory of the art house, to collaborate with a talented but not immune to emotional turmoil director Rene Vidal (Vincent Macken). "Vampires" is his idea-fix, an archaic (albeit revolutionary at the time of filming) surrealist opus that relentlessly haunts Vidal, prompts him to leave his own family, drives him into even more madness, increasing the number of appointments with the therapist.
Thematically retreating and expanding on his 1996 film, Assayas adapts what is happening to modern realities with an increased dose of humor and technical arsenal, but still endows the film with immutable truths about the "magic of cinema," scandals, damaged reputations and general comic confusion. The director also quotes his own life, repeating Warhol's mantra about life imitates art: during the shooting of the original he decided to marry the actress Maggie Chung, then more than 20 years later he gave the film's hero the same background of Vidal suffering from abandoned love. Everything that happens in the series will be emphatically reminiscent of Truffaut's "American Night," with the same backstage squabbles and peripeteia gradually dissolving into the acid demanding process of filmmaking. Vidal pretentiously shoots his adaptation exclusively on film, not for bragging rights, but because he simply cannot live and exist otherwise.
Vikander, who leads the series, appears here in one of the most impassioned roles of her career. Mira gradually merges with Irma (another transposition of letters), gets so deeply into her that she acquires superpowers, lives on Parisian rooftops, walks through walls, overhears conversations of people once close to her, fully experiencing her loneliness and infernal essence. Macken admirably conveys the menacing chaotic yet meticulous nature of the filmmaking profession. The German Lars Eidinger also captures the attention as the drugged-out actor Gottfried, talking about communism, his fatigue with gay culture, and his agenda for cinema. Gottfried spoils the life of the crew by forcing them to put up with his passion for erotic asphyxiation and requests for another "dose", which delays production, but always handles the role (or mission) assigned to him with nonchalance.
In the final series, the director adds even more elasticity to the plot by inviting a cameo by her muse Kristen Stewart ("Personal Shopper," "Zils Maria"). She, like Mira, rose to fame with a box office franchise and then turned to European cinema, finding a new path that she has hardly left since. Assayas broadcasts his personal neuroses on screen, with a longstanding consciousness of the eternal meme hero, and manages not to weigh down the material with jaded ironic reflection. He is phlegmatic and absurd, inviting you to embrace that absurdity in yourself, immersing both actors and audience members in a trance. His eight-part odyssey parodies the tale of Koschei, where the final needle reminds of co-dependence with cinema and its total power, heralding the imminent arrival of the very angel of liberating death in a tight black jumpsuit. Her name is Irma Vep.
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