It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

I suppose this film is by its nature polarizing, because it's a movie about film-making that lacks action, or drama, or a strong plot line. Nonetheless, I think it stands as one of the most charming, and disarmingly original, films of the 90s. A somewhat haphazard production company in Paris, about to remake a silent classic, has a mixed reaction to the casting of an actress from the Hong Kong cinema (Maggie Cheung, utterly delightful) as its iconic French heroine. The movie lazily moves through onset and offset scenes that detail the relationships of the movie's cast and crew, with Cheung, playing herself, employed as the innocent abroad. One of the most interesting movies about movies ever made, with the legendary Jean-Pierre Leaud as the mad, virtually incomprehensible director. Magnifique.

Modern French cinema is far removed from the time when Louis Feuillade made his silent serial "Les Vampires". In 1915, the war had stifled the French film industry, as elsewhere, and thus the international dominance of Hollywood since. "Irma Vep", a film about filmmaking with all the self-reflexive jesting, owes more to the New Wave of several decades later.In it, a director plans to remake the nearly seven-hour long silent serial "Les Vampires", and he plans to remake it as a silent film, to boot. Casting a Hong Kong action star in the lead was the most rational decision he made. Here in lies the absurd humor of "Irma Vep". It's a clever idea, although a recycled one. I especially like the use of a silent serial, as I've seen many silent films (although I don't care for "Les Vampires" or serials in general). Anyhow, there are some good pokes at the modern French film industry; quibbles over the uncomfortable coexistence between commercial, popular movies (which would include "Les Vampires") and the artsy, government-funded ones (which would probably include "Irma Vep"); and French filmmaker stereotypes are exploited.The comicality is hit or miss, but that's not what I consider the film's major problem. I think the subplots (the lesbianism, personal affairs and such) detract from it. "Irma Vep" lacks focus, just as with the film within the film. The various story-lines and the film's style stray far from the path, but the problem is there doesn't seem to have been much of a path to begin with and, in the end, we get images from a completely unfocused mind.

The only moment when I can confidently relate to what is going on in "Irma Vep" is when a character asks why such well made original films need to be remade. The turkey graveyard is littered with examples such as "Stagecoach", "Shadow of a Doubt", "Psycho" and most needlessly of all "Cry, the Beloved Country". Having, admittedly, only sat through half of Olivier Assayas's tedious French offering, I am minded to ask a different question but one that I imagine has the same answer. What is the point of making a film about making a film? The results are generally pretty dull. Even some of the great have come unstuck. Truffaut's "Day for Night", although not entirely without interest, is hardly among his best work, likewise Fellini's "Otto e Mezzo" about a film maker suffering from a creative block. I can only imagine that he had to get uncertainties out of his system that would enable him to go on to such wondrous stuff as "Amarcord". But does this justify such a monumental work of self-indulgence? The genre defeated Bertrand Tavernier whose "Laissez-Passer" has to be counted among French cinema's greatest yawns. But at least I sat it out in the belief that in its attempt to create a period of history so meticulously - French cinema making during the German occupation of Paris - it came into the worthy if dull category. I found no such saving grace in what little I saw of "Irma Vep". I think that, like remakes, such works are the result of their creators' desire to let us know they are still around during times of inspirational sterility. Surely the worthy thing for a director of integrity to do during such periods is to shut up.

"Irma Vep" (an acronym for "vampire") is a critically lauded film about the making of a French movie which seems to be devoid of value and purpose. Probably a failed attempt at satirical commentary on the film biz, this flick has only a wisp of a plot, the look of a documentary, the feel of an indie, and manages to conjure little more than a whole lot of busy-ness. Devoid of everything people go to films to see, "Irma Vep" is a colossal waste of time. Recommended for film critics only. (D+)