Movies Like Irma Vep (1996)

Staff & contributors

Chasing the feel of watching Irma Vep ? Here are the movies we recommend you watch right after.

In this film-within-a-film, we and a fictional version of actress Maggie Cheung are brought through the disorienting experience of French filmmaking. The film’s washed-up director wants to remake the classic silent film Les Vampires to revive his career. But as with all plans, everything inevitably goes wrong. On top of depicting the regular chaos of a movie set, this film presents the anxieties of the modern-day French film industry—about how it may be past its prime, and how it can still compete on a global level. And through the steady, inscrutable face of Maggie Cheung, we remember the creative collaborations we've had ourselves—the energetic passion, the behind-the-scenes power dynamics, and the pure chaos of the process.

Jenna is a young woman living a rather unhappy life in a town in the American South. The highlight of her days is inventing and baking pies at the diner where she works, giving them names like the “I Hate My Husband Pie”. Her life, however, seems to have hit an unpleasant dead-end: as her pie suggests, she no longer loves her chauvinistic pig of a husband and, as if that wasn’t enough, she’s pregnant with his child.

Waitress is about one woman’s determination to dig through the sourness of life in the hopes of finding a layer of sweetness underneath. Premiering only months after lead actress Adrienne Shelly’s tragic death at the age of 40, Waitress features wonderful performances that make for a delicious film, with the right ingredients to hold everything together.

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Actor: Adrienne Shelly, Andy Griffith, Andy Ostroy, Caroline Fogarty, Cheryl Hines, Christy Taylor, Cindy Drummond, Darby Stanchfield, Eddie Jemison, Heidi Sulzman, Jeremy Sisto, Keri Russell, Lauri Johnson, Lew Temple, Mackenzie King, Nathan Dean, Nathan Fillion, Sarah Hunley

Director: Adrienne Shelly