TLDR: It's like 30 Rock for high-brow French film
I was slow to warm up to the Irma Vep (2022) pilot because it at first seemed like barely more than a trope-fest. However, it became clear that trope & cliche are the show's ground, not its figure. This is because Irma Vep is a show about making TV, so TV tropes are simply the stereotypes of the workplace, just like those of any other. The show is more complicated than that. In fact, it is intentionally over-complicated well past the point of what is reasonable. The story is barely linear, and once realizing this a viewer can begin enjoying the bizarre format.
As far as I can tell, the point of the show is to poke fun at the culture of high-brow cinema production, with a secondary objective of paying homage to the same high-brow type of cinema. So what you get is the comedy of ultimately regular people who are all trying to live up to some unspoken 'standard' of how the cast of a hyper-artsy french film should behave; as well as the legitimately top-quality (or so I assume with my limited knowledge) cinematic moments where the show reminds you why these otherwise-unremarkable goofballs get paid the big bucks.
It's well acted, funny in a sometimes surreal way, and delivers (through its being a love letter to all that is old and avant-garde) some scenes that are top-notch in the classical sense.
I was slow to warm up to the Irma Vep (2022) pilot because it at first seemed like barely more than a trope-fest. However, it became clear that trope & cliche are the show's ground, not its figure. This is because Irma Vep is a show about making TV, so TV tropes are simply the stereotypes of the workplace, just like those of any other. The show is more complicated than that. In fact, it is intentionally over-complicated well past the point of what is reasonable. The story is barely linear, and once realizing this a viewer can begin enjoying the bizarre format.
As far as I can tell, the point of the show is to poke fun at the culture of high-brow cinema production, with a secondary objective of paying homage to the same high-brow type of cinema. So what you get is the comedy of ultimately regular people who are all trying to live up to some unspoken 'standard' of how the cast of a hyper-artsy french film should behave; as well as the legitimately top-quality (or so I assume with my limited knowledge) cinematic moments where the show reminds you why these otherwise-unremarkable goofballs get paid the big bucks.
It's well acted, funny in a sometimes surreal way, and delivers (through its being a love letter to all that is old and avant-garde) some scenes that are top-notch in the classical sense.
