FLS, Volume XXXVII, 2010 Stealing the Fire

Trae DeLellis University of Miami

Copycat, Copycat: The Anxiety of Influence in Irma Vep

Remakes, long considered the refuge of cinematic hacks and thieves, get a revision in Olivier Assayas’s Irma Vep. While Harold Bloom once claimed that “The French have never valued originality” (xv), Assayas’s retake on the remake squarely examines and transcends the conven- tional conceptions of influence and originality.

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For its sixtieth anniversary celebration, the Cannes Film Festival commissioned over thirty internationally renowned filmmakers to submit a short film expressing their own feelings about the cinema to form the omnibus film, Chacun son cinéma (2007). Each filmmaker embarked on the project with a stringent time limit of three to four minutes and the condition that the film would take place in a cinema. Among this group of celebrated filmmakers, Olivier Assayas contributed Recrudescence, which commences with an unnamed man (George Babluani) and focuses on a young woman (Deniz Gamze Ergüven) who is entering a multiplex to meet her date (Lionel Dray). The couple, unaware of the man watching them, purchase tickets and “childish” candy before entering their screening. While the couple succumb to the desires aroused by a darkened theater, the man, who has been intently following them, silently filches the woman’s purse. After the screening, the woman calls her own phone, which the thief answers, “Yes, it’s me.” Indicative of the ambiguity for which As- sayas has been celebrated and derided, Recrudescence offers little ex- planation to character motivation or personal histories. Despite its lack 142 FLS, Vol. XXXVII, 2010 of resolution, this vignette encapsulates the issue at hand, one of supreme importance to Assayas: a cinematic theft. Property and, specifically, intellectual property, artistic and commercial, serves as a concurrent theme throughout Assayas’s work. Fin août, début septembre (Late August, Early September 1998) abounds with property issues, including the apartment shared by Ga- briel and Jenny, the clothing designs of Anne, and the texts of Adrien. Likewise, Les Destinées sentimentales (2000) deals in great depth with the production of porcelain and brandy in the face of interna- tional competition. These ideas of property rights and competition have only intensified in works of Assayas’s such as demonlover (2002) and Clean (2004). demonlover revolves around a corporate war over distribution rights for pornographic Japanese anime, while Clean centers on the ownership and marketing of a deceased musician’s back catalogue. Boarding Gate (2007), a quasi-continuation of the interna- tional corporate world of demonlover, even features a DVD piracy op- eration run out of China. Assayas’s latest film, L’heure d’été (Summer Hours 2008) deals with a French family, as they settle the estate and property issues raised by their mother’s death. Despite these various forays into intellectual property ownership, Assayas’s greatest medi- tation on the creative process and collision of art and commerce comes in the form of Irma Vep (1996), the film that cemented As- sayas’s international reputation as one of France’s most interesting filmmakers. With Irma Vep, Assayas challenges Harold Bloom’s claim that “the French have never valued originality,” by engaging directly with Bloom’s concept, “the anxiety of influence” from his seminal text, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (xv). Addressing the postmodern axiom that “everything has been done before,” Bloom proposes a theory of poetic and literary influence that examines an artist’s relationship to previous artists and works of art. Bloom posits that artists find inspiration to create art through a predecessor’s works, and in order to avoid a weak, derivative version of the forerunner’s ideas, the new artist must address his or her own anxiety of influence (5). In cinematic terms, Bloom’s argument finds no greater validity than in the process of the remake. Despite Bloom’s claim about the French and originality, the re- make in French cinema is a site of great contention, particularly its