A film customized for Maggie Cheung by the French director Olivier Assayas who became Cheung’s first and only husband shortly after the completion of the film. Cheung was playing herself, a HK actress who was known in the west as the parter of Kongfu master Jackie Chan but was surprisingly chosen by a French director to remake Louis Feuillade’s 1916 classic Les Vampires. The film was shot complete in a couple of months without a single retake. It must have been a very refreshening role for Cheung to be dressed in a latex cat suit found in a sex shop working with a chaotic and arrogant French crew who showed no respect or understanding to her acting or opinions, and this is where Assayas made Irma Vep into a memorable film, by cleverly demonstrating the ridicule of the French film industry as well as paying homage to the Nouvelle Vague masters. All typically French I would say. As for Cheung’s performance in it, I like what Nick Burton said in his review: “To see Maggie Cheung in this remarkable film is to fall in love with her.” I think that applies to most of her films from 1998.
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