Irma Vep (1996)
Directed by Olivier Assayas
A has-been French filmmaker wants a Hong Kong actress to be the heroine in a rendering of Les Vampires.
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What critics compared Irma Vep to
“Personal Shopper” bears about as much in common with any other ghost movie you may have seen as the director’s now-20-year-old “Irma Vep” does classic vampire movies (which was sort of the point, centering on a remake of silent classic “Les Vampires”).
Assayas has always worked at a consistently high level of excellence, but “Personal Shopper” is his most vital film in years, at times recalling the verve of his 1996 breakthrough “ Irma Vep ” (whose star, Maggie Cheung, Stewart evokes whenever she gets on a motorcycle).
As with the same director’s Irma Vep, Personal Shopper adds unexpected cultural flavours (a dramatised Victor Hugo seance, Klimt abstracts) to its generic underpinnings.
Kent Jones once wrote that his movies, including "Irma Vep" and "Carlos," present “the blur of existence.”
Kristen Stewart, who plays Maureen, has something in common with other stars of Mr. Assayas’s films, notably Maggie Cheung in “Irma Vep” and “Clean” — a quality of self-enclosed detachment that becomes its own peculiar form of intensity.
Maybe it’s that his love for that certain period of skate film informs the movie’s structure with blissful results at the end, that has shades of Assayas’ Irma Vep or, perhaps, had it been done poorly, JJ Abrams’ Super 8 , in its magical depiction of the fruits of creation.
It is as cinematically assured and technically proficient as anything to come out in 1997 (with the possible exception of Irma Vep).