How a Century-Old Story Inspired the New Series Irma Vep

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below."

In its way, Olivier Assayas’ 1996 film Irma Vep has become as much of a cultural touchstone as Louis Feuillade’s Les Vampires, the silent French serial to which Assayas’ movie paid homage. Not only did the film—about the making of a contemporary Les Vampires remake—become an influential cult favorite, it gave star Maggie Cheung the best role of her career as Maggie Cheung, an actress starring as Irma Vep in an adaptation of Les Vampires.

Now Assayas returns to Irma Vep for HBO, loosely adapting his film into an eight-episode limited series airing Monday nights on HBO. Starring Alicia Vikander, this version follows Mira, an American movie star seeking redemption from her career of blockbusters and a recent tabloid scandal by tackling a role in a miniseries adaptation of Les Vampires. And just as the original Irma Vep was written with Cheung in mind, so too did Assayas’ current leading lady inspire this latest iteration.

“I sensed that with Alicia Vikander, I had someone who could be Irma Vep,” Assays says from the editing suite in France where he was finishing the final four episodes of the show. “She’s powerful, but she also has something vulnerable. She’s one of the smartest actresses I've ever worked with. And she could pull it off. So I really got myself into the whole process of writing the series because I knew she potentially was interested, so I knew who I was writing for.”

Now, almost 30 years after making Cheung an arthouse sensation with Irma Vep, Assayas has delivered Vikander one of the best roles of her career. Alternately imperious and fragile, Mira finds herself in the middle of a truly chaotic shoot, donning the catsuit first popularized in the original by Musidora. While the director fights with the insurance company, her co-star pouts about his role and her agent plots to get her back into mainstream films, Mira struggles with both the role and her messy personal life. Along the way, Assayas has great fun with the current state of cinema versus television, the foibles of performers, and, as always, the towering affection so many filmmakers feel for the potency of Les Vampires.

Assayas’ interest in the 1915 serial dates back to his early 20s when he wrote his thesis on the serial writer Gustave Le Rouge, who was friends with Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. “Because I worked on that in my early 20s, I’ve always had this obsession with how Symbolist poetry had a huge influence on early cinema,” Assayas says. “One of the elements that to me is the most powerful and striking in the work of Feuillade, ultimately, is that he was the filmmaker in the early cinema whose imagination was defined by the imagery of symbolist poetry. Now, our imaginations are completely colonized by cinema. But the filmmakers of the silent era were inspired by images that came from poetry, from literature, from painting.”

That symbolist influence ensures that Les Vampires remains enchanting almost 110 years after its premiere. A wild tale of a journalist investigating a gang called The Vampires, the 10-part serial was a huge hit during World War I, turning Musidora’s catsuit-clad vamp Irma Vep into an icon. Musidora’s startlingly modern performance itself is a thing of mesmeric beauty, a prototypical Edward Gorey character that belongs in the realm of art as much as film.

WATCH IRMA VEP NOW

“What is fascinating about Irma Vep is she is the [first appearance] of an archetype,” Assayas says. “You see the birth of an archetype, which is not the style of Louis Feuillaude or this or that director did the first tracking shot. All of a sudden, this strange creature who purely belongs to the cinema is going to crawl into the history of cinema in very mysterious and magical ways.”

Now Irma Vep slinks into the world of prestige limited series, our modern version of the serial. And as always, she remains in safe hands with Assayas and the portrayer he has selected for her.

You Might Also Like

• 12 Weekend Getaway Spas For Every Type of Occasion

• What Your Favorite Champagne Brand Says About You

• Beauty Gurus Share Their Makeup Secrets for Older Women