"Irma Vep". Vampire seriality as transfusion between literature, film and life

Abstract

This article traces the cultural, literary, and cinematic origins of the female revenant starring in Olivier Assayas’ latest TV series, Irma Vep (2022) to clarify his reinterpretation of the female vampire character. It goes back to the wandering supernatural bloodsucker in nineteenth-century French literature, and traces her transfiguration into the criminal human of twentieth-century urban space in Louis Feuillade’s Les vampires (1915), a silent serial starring a thief by the anagrammatic name Irma Vep. Assayas’ series revisits both the vampire character and the filmography of the director himself: Assayas presents a serial remake of his 1996 film by the same title, namely the behind-the-scenes production of a remake of Feuillade’s serial. When the lead actress of the remake loses herself in her character, the spirit of Irma Vep completely takes over her new performer. The vampire archetype thus becomes a metaphor for the regeneration of cinema. While challenged by streaming platforms, the spirit of cinema is insistently resurrecting, just like a female vampire, taking possession of new artistic vehicles and enlivening film seriality à la Feuillade. Irma Vep, vampire double in a literal sense, thus embodies the continuous resurrection of the spirit of cinema, which today even moves from films for the big screen to auteur series for the small screen.