Irma Vep Review: The Severed Head / The Ring That Kills (Season 1 Episodes 1 and 2)
On Irma Vep Season 1 Episodes 1 and 2, “The Severed Head,” and “The Ring That Kills,” we’re introduced to a complicated cast of characters and shown the highs and lows of life in the film industry.
Mira is an action star trying her hand at an artsy remake project in France. Rene is an eccentric director with a very specific vision and a trust that Mira is the perfect “evil muse.” Surrounding them are actors with egos, ex-lovers, and just about every kind of obstacle imaginable.
Rene’s drug dependency and unstable mood make insuring the series nearly impossible. The low budget makes it nearly impossible to hire a staff that will work toward Rene’s vision. And the male lead of the series is very possibly a liability when it comes to his relationships with his female costars.
Predictably, this is not simply a series about the making of a miniseries. To definitively nail down the purpose of what we’re watching might be difficult, though.
It’s a little bit mystery, a little bit romance, a little bit drama… and yet, when it all comes together, even with all of these elements that should be riveting, it can be pretty boring.
It seems the main goal, at least at first, is to give us this backstory about Mira and her ex-girlfriend, the way their relationship went sour, and how it still impacts both of them even much later. Mira clearly still has feelings, and Laurie is at least still attracted to Mira. But we never see exactly what their current dynamic is.
Listen, I love a good love story with elements of jealousy as much as the next guy, but as that story is told on Irma Vep Season 1 Episode 1, “The Severed Head,” that story is all a bit of a mess.
Mira and Laurie, her former assistant, very clearly still have issues after Laurie left the relationship to marry a director with whom Mira had just worked. Laurie doesn’t seem like a particularly nice person, but then neither does Mira.
So the question we have to ask is this: why do we care what happens to them?
Then, once they do sort of talk about their relationship, they drop the subject. Just when it feels like it might be intriguing, they take it away. And they have yet to dig back into it or fully explain what their deal was in the first place.
The most interesting part of the episode to me is the filmmaking aspect of it. We see how it works to arrive on a new set, how it works when actors and directors butt heads, and how a film is made from the ground up. But as far as any reason to care about these characters, there’s just not much to work with.
Maybe my hope upon seeing so many characters with such complicated stories was that the chemistry between them all would draw me in, but the interactions are dicey at best. They’ve also introduced so many new characters so quickly that it’s hard to keep up.
So my hope was that Irma Vep Season 1 Episode 2, “The Ring That Kills,” would give me something to care about. Really, though, it’s just more of the same. Mira is not becoming the endearing, tragic figure that I had hoped for, which isn’t to say that the eternal optimist in me isn’t hopeful.
I’ve been starving for more female characters to love.
On paper, Mira is everything I should love. She’s beautiful and tragic and queer and sympathetic… or she should be. She’s even played by Alicia Vikander, an actress I have loved on former projects. But in this, Mira only comes across as boring.
Since I love to hope to an almost tragic degree, I still want to believe that something will happen in future episodes that will make this series worth the watch. It has all the potential to be worth the lag of these first two episodes, but I’ve been burned before.
We’ll have to see.
I need to add that I do love to go into new shows knowing as little as possible about them. So it wasn’t until I finished these episodes that I discovered that Irma Vep is a remake of a 1996 series starring Maggie Cheung.
I do wonder why this series was remade without an Asian woman as the lead. It seems it’s yet another case of whitewashing, and aren’t we all tired of that by now?
All in all, these first two episodes were not without some entertaining aspects. However, it just feels sort of stuck at this point. Nothing feels like it’s moving forward. Can something happen, please?
Let’s hope so.
What did you think of these episodes of Irma Vep? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Irma Vep airs Mondays at 9/8c on HBO and is streaming on HBO Max.
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