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Two episodes in, Olivier Assayas\u2019s new, mind-bendingly metatextual HBO series, Irma Vep, has already proven to be catnip for cinephiles. An audacious expansion and reinvention of Assayas's\xa01996 film of the same title\u2014in which an aging French filmmaker attempts to remake Louis Feuillade\u2019s classic silent serial, Les vampires, with Maggie Cheung as the criminal vamp Irma Vep\u2014the eight-part series features a nearly dizzying mise-en-abyme structure. Here, a neurotic filmmaker (seemingly modeled on Assayas) recreates Feuillade\u2019s serial for a contemporary, binge-TV audience. Alicia Vikander plays Mira Harberg, an American pop heroine who is cast as Irma Vep among a glossy, transnational crew of actors.\n\nIn the four episodes available to critics so far, Irma Vep engages with its multiple sources, its medium, and the lives of its creators in increasingly surprising and thought-provoking ways. On this week\u2019s podcast, Film Comment editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited critics Adam Nayman and Beatrice Loayza to dig into the series\u2019 endless rabbit holes and riffs on the history of serials, cinema, and, err, "content."