Irma Vep: Subtlety at its Finest
In 1996, Maggie Cheung was cast as herself in Olivier Assayas’s Irma Vep, a meta satire on the decline of French film and filmmaking as a whole. Since its debut, the status of celebrity and filmmaking has shifted to a world where streaming has dominated theaters and internet stars become actors. Following trends, Assayas remixed Irma Vep into a limited series starring Oscar winner Alicia Vikander.
Vikander isn’t playing Vikander, she is Mira, a successful American actress who is in Paris shooting a television remake of a French silent film. The series allows the audience to be in on the behind of the scenes of fame including the press junket grind, publicity tours, and the beast that is award season. Besides following the glamorous life of Mira, there are storylines centered around drama within the creatives behind the remake and Mira’s personal love live mess with her former personal assistant who happens to be engaged to the director of her latest film. There is a lot of unresolved tension between all the introduced conflicts that start the series off on a good start.
The series feels very European even with an American company behind it. It has the relaxation that many strictly structured US scripted dramas seem to forget. It allows the stories it sets up to get their time to slowly unravel in ways that make sense to the overall arch. Key players and nameless staff are introduced, allies are set, and tensions are established all within one episode. It doesn’t seem that Assayas is too concerned with how all the subtle storylines will merge into one bigger story. He is relying more on these small moments instead of cliffhangers to keep audiences engaged. Conflict is slowly simmering.
The pilot serves to create a familiarity with Mira in the most authentic way possible, audiences are thrown right into her busy life of filming and press. Vikander plays this role effortlessly and makes even the smallest most mundane moments interesting while also being able to turn up the heat when exes enter her territory. It is an interesting, compelling immersion into the life of an actor in production.