Olivier Assayas's IRMA VEP (1996)
First of all, it should be noted that few cameras have adored a modern performer as much as the one here loves to film Maggie Cheung; that could be said for a number of her other films as well, but here she just lights up every moment she is seen. Irma Vep is another of those films I come across and feel a sense of bewilderment that I did not get this into my mind and soul ten or even twenty-five years ago, as it is a movie about the movies, but also about how the people who work on movies are not this amorphous blob of the best of the best skilled technicians (at least on an independently-scaled sort of level), and that anyone who works on a movie is just a human being. Though it is quite different in terms of structure and even in style, I think a good double feature would be this and Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion, at least in the scope of how the actors and director and the various production personnel are demystified if nothing else because both directors know that what they...
