SCREENING
Irma Vep (Episodes 5–8)
Sunday, Jan 8, 2023 at 3:00 pm
Part of Curators’ Choice 2022
Dir. Olivier Assayas. 2022, 217 mins., plus 15-minute intermission. DCP. In English and French with English subtitles. With Alicia Vikander, Vincent Macaigne, Adria Arjona, Byron Bowers, Jeanne Balibar, Vincent LaCoste, Nora Hamzawi, Hippolyte Girardot, Devan Ross, Alex Descas, Carrie Brownstein, Lars Eidinger, Tom Sturridge, Fala Chen, Pascal Greggory, Vivian Wu. Even after more than thirty years making films, director Assayas has never stopped taking risks, reinventing himself, and finding new ways to diagnose the changes in a movie industry he both loves and distrusts. His beloved 1996 comedy Irma Vep is a modern classic, starring Maggie Cheung playing a variation of herself who has come from Hong Kong to Paris to star as a slinky criminal mastermind in a remake of Louis Feuillade’s silent crime serial Les Vampires. This year, in totally unexpected fashion, Assayas released his own 21st-century serial, a continuation of Irma Vep, starring Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander as a Hollywood star cast as the lead of the same inexplicable but heartfelt project, and Vincent Macaigne taking over for the original film’s Jean-Pierre Léaud as the director, who slowly loses it over the course of shooting. A work of auto-fiction that digs deep into its maker’s own fetishes, blind spots, dreams, and desires for an artistic medium increasingly on a dangerous precipice, Irma Vep is a thrilling, endlessly generative work about the making of movies that keeps revealing new and delightful surprises with each episode.
Tickets are free with Museum admission: $20 / $12 senior and students / $10 youth (ages 3–17) / free for MoMI members. Purchase general admission and reserve your ticket. Pick up your ticket for the screening upon arrival. All seating is general admission. Review safety protocols before your visit.