Irma Vep is a magnificently varied film, integrating film footage, press interviews, gossip, and film's hurry-up-and-wait production schedule. Cheung in particular does a masterful job playing herself, at once transparent and opaque.

| Jan 11, 2021

An exhilarating film that happens to be about moviemaking itself, Olivier Assayas's sinuous, kinetic, waggish Irma Vep is an oblique, supremely enjoyable course in movie history.

| Oct 9, 2020

A funny and fascinatingly open-ended look at the state of the art, Irma Vep is well worth a look.

| Jun 16, 2020

I really enjoyed "Irma Vep." I will, however, be the first to admit that it's not for everybody.

| Jun 16, 2020

The post-modern compulsions on display here may bring movies together, but they also keep people apart.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 7, 2009

Irma Vep's director, Olivier Assayas, evinces a love of the process that's nearly as palpable as Truffaut's.

| Mar 3, 2008

Slender but appealing.

| Mar 3, 2008

A delightfully nonchalant movie, complete with some nice satirical barbs aimed at contemporary French film culture, and fine performances throughout.

| Jun 24, 2006

Minor but witty.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 20, 2003

As effortless as a shrug and boasts a film buff's dream cast.

| Feb 14, 2001

Movies about making movies are never quite as interesting as the people who make them think they're going to be.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

A film of such spontaneity, freshness and breezy chaos that you feel as if it were assembled from happy accidents and inspired, seat-of- the-pants improvisation.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Ultimately, Irma Vep doesn't quite have the courage of its convictions, but still provides plenty of scathing satire on the state of French cinema.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2000

It's a languorous love ballad, and a daring one, about the way moving pictures move, the way they hold light, the way they steal from us when we're not looking.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Assayas demonstrates an assured light touch here, drawing expert comic performances from Cheung, Richard and Ogier while using a 16mm hand-held camera to lend the film a live, experimental quality.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Ends up a knowing, and fairly lucid, portrait of the filmmaking experience, warts and all.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Scripted in ten days and shot in less than a month, the film unravels like a delirious piece of automatic writing, though in this case the sinister implications apply to a very different world -- our own.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000