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Cheung plays the heroine Irma Vep. She spends most of the film dressed in a tight, black, PVC suit, defending her directors' odd choices to hostile crew members and journalists. As the film progresses, the plot mirrors the disorientation felt by the film's director.

In the 1915 original serial, written and directed by Louis Feuillade, Irma Vep (an anagram for vampire) was played by French silent film actress Musidora (1889-1957). Parts of the film depict set-related incidents that echo scenes in Truffaut's "La nuit americaine" (English title: "Day for night"). Like Truffaut, Assayas was a critic for influential French film magazine Cahiers du cinema.

Assayas married Cheung in 1998. They divorced in 2001.

See also

• Louis Feuillade, director of the original serial film Les vampires (1915-1916)
• Henri Langlois, who preserved the original film
• Alain Resnais, who paid homage to the film in his Last Year at Marienbad
• Hotel for Criminals , a 1974 Richard Forman / Stanley Silverman musical
• The Mystery of Irma Vep , a 1984 play for two characters by Charles Ludlam