The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, October 21-27
Irma Vep (1996)
Directed by Olivier Assayas
The director’s still-signature work is a sort of egghead cinephile love letter to star Maggie Cheung, and much more. It’s an actively thinking, self-questioning film—and you can feel Assayas realizing a newfound freedom of experimentation, though the alchemy is more playful than forcible. Assayas would return to explore the life of actors and behind-the-production in Clouds of Sils Maria, but without the punk, rip-it-up aesthetic employed here. A cousin to Day for Night (Jean-Pierre Léaud, as the director here, looks as Truffaut-like as ever) but also Fassbinder’s funnier Beware of a Holy Whore, Irma Vep is too invested in cinema history (particularly 1915’s French serial Les Vampires) and its present critical state (circa 1996) to ever settle for being simply a titillating glimpse at Show People. Justin Stewart (October 23, 8pm at Anthology Film Archives’s “Les Vampires and Musidora”)