I got the Criterion Channel over the weekend, feeling like I was long overdue to sign up as a nerdy cinephile. It’s pretty good selections, though way heavy on the classic European arthouse films that feel more like film school studies assignments. I had my fill of that when I was much younger, so I wasn’t as into that, but mostly checking out the indie/artsy films that were more contemporary.
I really enjoyed watching Beatrice Dalle’s screen test for 1986's Betty Blue, where she just tells stories of crazy adventures with her boyfriends and shady photographers, and I couldn’t tell how much was true and how much was her trying to be in character. But she just popped on camera with a lot of wild sexiness and vibrant charisma, she was totally that girl.
I watched Irma Vep, a 1996 film by Olivier Assayas starring Maggie Cheung as a fictional version of herself coming to Paris to film a remake of a silent film called Les Vampyres, dressed in a tight latex suit a la Catwoman and dealing with a messy film shoot, neurotic French crew members, confusing romantic attractions, and a stressed film director. I really liked the mix of it being artsy and modern of the time, mixing meta stuff with Cheung being largely known at the time from Jackie Chan movies like Police Story and her co-starring role in The Heroic Trio, adding Sonic Youth music and music video art etchings to silent film footage, with the casual look of the film crew and Cheung, it was all just an enjoyable hodgepodge of high and low art combined. I could see how this style would predict later Assayas films like Clean (with Cheung as a transplant to Paris but speaking way more French then) Clouds of Sils Maria, and Personal Shopper as commentaries on the French film and showbiz industry and inner workings of behind the scenes players.
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