There's an honourable French tradition of film critics turning to direction, and Olivier Assayas's films are as clever, playful and cine-literate as might be expected from a former Cahiers du Cinema contributor. In Irma Vep (1996), the only one of Assayas's films ever distributed in Ireland (in the IFC), he created an intriguing hall of mirrors. The film documents a re-make of a series of silent films from 1915 for French TV. The female star of this series is a catsuited thief called Irma Vep, who is played in the re-make by the Hong Kong action star, Maggie Cheung.
The director, Vidal (Jean Pierre Leaud), who goes spectacularly off the rails during the filming, is almost a parody of an auteur, buckling under the burden of cinema history, stifled by his knowledge of the medium and his excessive-reverence for his predecessors. All his efforts are concentrated on the creation of a single image: of a lithe, kohl-eyed woman in a latex catsuit - as iconic as Garbo's white face and arched eyebrows. Later, in a destructive gesture, Vidal defaces this image with squiggles and jagged lines, which emerge like streaks of lightning from her eyes and mouth.
Assayas is both recreating and commenting on the trope of men looking at women through the camera, with Maggie Cheung's face as the blank screen onto which the viewer's desires are projected. All the characters' obsession with cinema make this a film buff's treat. It casts a cool eye over the insecurity and egomania of the film people, while raising questions which recur in many of Assayas's films, about reconciling creativity with commerciality; about the individual in the institution; about how people learn to survive and adapt.
Irma Vep will be screened on Friday April 23rd at the Virgin at 2 p.m. Olivier Assayas will introduce his latest film, Late August, Early September, and will take part in a public interview on Saturday, April 24th, Virgin, at 12.30 p.m. with former DFF director and film-maker, Martin Mahon.
