Maybe Irma Vep not be the most watched series HBOnor the new Game of Thronesnor that their servers have collapsed when they premiered each of their eight episodes, but it is one of the titles most unique and with the greatest personality this year. A love song to the world of cinema, full of meta-references and winks to vindicate a film that is over a hundred years old and show how it is still relevant today. Every time a new remake, the debate usually arises as to whether it makes sense to retell what others have already recounted. In Irma Vep, the French filmmaker Olivier Assayas loop the loop, since we are facing the remake of the remake. Or rather, before the series about the remake. In 1996, Assayas made a film about a director who wanted to make a version of the French classic The Vampires. More than two decades later, he takes up this same idea. But a movie is not enough. An hour and a half was a short time for everything he wanted to say. A series was necessary.
Irma Vep was one of the first femes fatales in the history of cinema and a character in the film/series shot in 1915 by Louis Feuillade, The Vampires. For lovers of anagrams, note that rearranging the consonants and letters that form the word Vampire we can also obtain the name of Irma Vep. The vampires in this film were not the famous blood drinkers of the horror genre. There were still a few years for the premiere of Nosferatu. Feuillade’s vampires were a secret criminal society that terrorized Paris and against which the protagonists fight and against which the reporter Philippe Guérande fights, disrupting his conspiracies. With its almost seven hours of duration, some film guides place it as one of the longest films in history. Although in reality, this work was signed in episodic format and in installments. Ten chapters in total, of unequal duration that could be 15 minutes or an hour, often with an open ending to keep the viewer intrigued and to see the next one again. Does it ring a bell? Was the debate about movies and series already in force more than a hundred years ago?
The parallels between cinema and series do not end here. In 1915 Europe was immersed in the First World War. They were not the best conditions to start shooting movies, right? This situation of instability was transferred to the production, where the filming progressed rapidly. The arguments were improvised because it was not known when work could be resumed and sudden casualties were the order of the day. For a long time, television series have moved with these parameters, always with very limited budgets and with the cancel sword of Damocles continuously over their heads.
Irma Vep was one of the leaders of that mysterious organization and, throughout its episodes, managed to rise to the position of Great Vampire. The iconic character from this silent movie classic was played by musidoraartistic name of jeanne roquesan actress who during the 1920s became muse of surrealism. A fact that is not anecdotal because there is a lot of surrealism in Assayas’s two incursions into the character, in case someone is thinking that we are facing a series told with conventional narratives.
Irma Vep’s skintight black uniform as she cloaks her heists has inspired many films and works of fiction. In the 90’s movie, Maggie Chung wore a black latex suit inspired by the one in the cat woman interpreted by michelle pfeiffer in batman returns of Tim Burtonwhile in the new series alice vikander girds a velvet suit reminiscent of the one in the black widow embodied by Scarlett Johansson in the movies of marvel universe.
In the HBO Max series, Vikander plays a Hollywood star tired of doing superhero movies and, for her, embarking on this independent project is an opportunity to be taken in her career and open the doors to more serious roles. In real life, the Oscar-winning actress from the danish girl was the star with which the saga of tomb Raider; so she could very well be playing herself. Although there are those who have seen parallels between her character and the actress Kristen Stewart on account of his coming out of the closet after his breakup with Robert Pattinson.
Irma Vep is a series to talk about the world of cinema. A kind of the american night of Francois Truffaut to HBO, which arrives when the platform has just destroyed a large part of its European production line. If in the version of the 90s, Assayas took the opportunity to laugh at some topicazos about French directors, in the series he has time to open the eye of his target and update references. Both in form and substance. There are allusions to the filming on chroma backgrounds to add digital background effects, something often used in large blockbusters. Debates about whether he has eroticized the shooting of a sexual assault scene too much to show us that (surprise!) more than a hundred years ago the shooting of that same scene caused a similar debate.
Irma Vep shows us a chaotic shoot, as chaotic as the series that now inspires her must have been in 1915. An open field for some of the stars to display their most toxic facet and where there is often a clash of egos. All this seasoned by a dreamlike atmosphere, almost surreal, possibly disconcerting the average viewer. All this to leave us at the end with the obvious conclusion that more than a hundred years later, Irma Vep is still alive.
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The legacy of Irma Vep