A low-key meta-textual masterpiece, Olivier Assayas’s nervy, knowing, semi-improvised 1996 comedy concerns a French film company attempting to remake one of French cinema’s holy texts, Louis Feuillade’s pop-surreal 1915 serial, Les Vampires, a classic of straight-faced, deceptive phantasmagoria. Maggie Cheung plays herself as a Hong Kong action movie star imported to play the iconic black-latex-clad villain, Irma Vep. But as the burned-out director (Jean-Pierre Leaud) burns further out, and the film crew get caught up in their own desires and wonder why they’re even trying to make this film at all, she finds herself drifting, and strangely possessed by the wild spirit of Irma. Assayas sets a skittering, refreshingly random pace and lets it go where it will, bouncing off of a very sparingly used but tres-cool three-song soundtrack. But while it feels lighthearted, his movie about movies has a dark and haunted undertow.