Look at Me (2004)

This is a remarkable and moving film, though due to its complexity it starts slowly. At first, we have no idea who all these people are and how they relate to one another. (In the beginning of the story, they don't, is the answer.) The film is directed by, and stars, a highly talented woman, Agnes Jaoui, and the original screenplay is written by her and Jean-Pierre Bacri. Bacri has thus helped to create a mercilessly unflattering part for himself, which he plays in the film, of a man so obsessed with himself and his celebrity that he notices no one, least of all his daughter from a previous marriage to a woman he didn't love. This daughter, played with enormous sensitivity and courage by Marilou Berry, is the central character in the story. She lacks self-confidence because she has never been given any. She is overweight, believes herself to be hopelessly ugly and uninteresting, and longs only to be noticed by her father and perhaps even to receive from him the odd crumb of left-over love which might fall from the altar of his narcissism. She never gets it. But the film is not a 'downer'. The girl, ironically named Lolita (a cruel joke, as it turns out), has a beautiful singing voice, and Agnes Jaoui plays her singing teacher. The film is full of wonderful classical music by Mozart, Monteverdi, and others, and at the latter part of the film important scenes are based round a concert in a small church. There is thus plenty to interest music lovers, especially classical singers. This film is a kind of tapestry of interwoven links between people, which displays their flaws and their strengths, their loves and their hates, and reveals their deepest characters. It is a profound psychological study of human relationships and weaknesses. One comes out of it having learned much more about those strange creatures called humans. Only a woman could have made this film, with its closely observed sense of the most intimate shades of personal nuances between people. Men are too busy being men to notice such subtleties, most of the time.

Fmovies: Agnes Jaoui's Look at Me is an almost perfectly-pitched comic character study, a nimble, amusing and thoughtful portrait of flawed people and their unlikely relationships. The principals form their attachments through a combination of accident and ambition: Lolita (Marilou Berry), the daughter of famous writer Etienne Cassard (Jean-Pierre Bacri), seeks the aid of an overworked music teacher, Sylvia (Agnes Jaoui), in rehearsing her chorale group for an up-coming performance. Sylvia has no interest in helping Lolita, whom she considers a bit of a pest, until realizing who Lolita's father is; wishing to meet the famous Cassard, who might be able to help her struggling-writer husband Pierre's (Laurent Grevill) career, Sylvia agrees to coach the ensemble. Cassard, taken with Sylvia and Pierre, helps the fledgling author; a rave article appears in a big newspaper, and Pierre is on his way to fame and fortune. Things come to a head, however, during one of those beloved French weekends in the country (where would French cinema be without weekends in the country): Cassard demonstrates himself to be a jerk by dressing-down his young, attractive wife Karine (Virginie Desarnauts) in front of everyone; Lolita realizes that her boyfriend Mathieu (Julien Baumgartner) is only interested in her because she's the daughter of the famous Cassard; Sylvia realizes what a jerk SHE is for trying to use poor Lolita, etc., The central character, Lolita, has the misfortune of being the off-spring of a famous man; she seems doomed always to exist in his shadow, to fail in every effort to gain attention for herself (to get someone to look at her). She's overweight, and chatters incessantly, and puts inordinate pressure on herself, but Agnes Jaoui has not conceived her as a poor, downtrodden victim; instead Jaoui has made her as self-absorbed as her father, as desperate for validation, creating a dynamic between them that feels wholly convincing, the friction that always exists between family members who are more alike than they would care to admit. The other important relationship is that of Sylvia to Pierre; Sylvia seems a woman of integrity, despite her rather shameless use of Lolita to gain entrée into Cassard's circle, but Pierre, after years of struggle, seems all-too-willing to toss his principles out the window in the name of success (he appears on a ridiculous talk-show, confetti raining on his head and half-naked girls grinding in his face; Sylvia can only sit on the sofa and stare in astonishment at what her husband has gotten himself into). Jaoui's intent is to delineate these characters precisely, to sketch as minutely as possible their motives, to map out their inter-relationships. And she achieves this, without apparent detriment to the narrative which moves briskly and confidently, and with the aid of several excellent performers. Marilou Berry is both sunny and gloomy as Lolita; she has her moments of self-doubt, almost of depression, but is too fundamentally driven, too stubborn, to allow her disappointments to stop her. Her father, Cassard, is played by Jean-Pierre Bacri as a man who has bought into his own hype so completely that he's forgotten he was ever anyone other than the eminent personage he's become (he's forgotten what it was like to be young and insecure like Lolita, and behaves thoughtlessly toward her). As Sylvia, Agnes Jaoui finds a sort of middle-ground between Lolita's self-doubt and Cassard's arrogance; and as her confused husband Pierre, Laurent Grevill projects the right kind of

The tremendously talented Agnes Jaoui, the director of "Look at Me", is a talented actress as well. The screen play is a collaboration with the principal actor in the film, Jean Pierre Bacri. The film's translation would have been better as "Like an Image", rather than the one it got. This is a film about disorientation and alienation between an impressionable young woman and her self centered father.

Young Lolita is a talented girl. She had tried to be an actress and now, as the film begins she is taking singing lessons. Her voice, indeed, is a powerful and beautiful instrument. Her music teacher, the kind Sylvia, has too much to do with all her students to pay particular attention to this plump, but pretty, girl until she hears about Lolita being the daughter of the influential Etienne Cassard.

The problem with Etienne is that he has married a younger woman who apparently loves him, but Karine has definite ideas about what is to have BCBG (bon chic, bon genre) among her circle. She's horrified to let her daughter have ice cream! Horreur! A chubby daughter, mais non! It is clear that Etienne couldn't care less for what happens to his older daughter, at the moment she most needs him. In a way, the image of the title is something this bourgeois man wants to maintain. He is one of the shallowest men in recent French movies! When at the end, during Lolita's triumphal recital, Etienne runs away from the church where the concert is being held, he does the ultimate coward act of his life; in a way he betrays the daughter who loves him and is trying to show she is worthy of his love.

The film is well written, but the problem is that some of the characters appear to be one dimensional people. There is no warmth whatsoever between anyone with the exception of the love that grows between Lolita and Sebastien, the young man that loves her in silence.

The lovely Marilou Berry makes a fabulous appearance. She is the only one in the film that gets our attention and compassion. Agnes Jaoui, is also the other one in the film that elicits our sympathy. Ms. Jaoui's Sylvia shows a complex woman turned off by all the shallowness around her, including her own husband Pierre. Jean Pierre Bacri, another excellent actor is given the terrible task to portray the horrible Etienne. The rest of the cast is good under Ms. Jaoui's direction.

This is a film that feels cold from beginning to end. That said, "Look at Me" offers us a good character study of the people that move in the literary circles, not only of France, but all over. No doubt the talented Ms. Jaoui's next time out will be even better!

Look at Me fmovies. I like the movie and thought it was interesting to see so many characters develop. Few popular American films can pull that off. The title made more sense to me after I thought for a while.

EVERYBODY in the film was saying, "Look at me!" which I think was the title of Pierre's book that he got accepted in the movie.

Lolita, of course, is saying to her father, Etienne, "Look at me, your daughter," as well as to everyone else, "Look at me for more than the chubby adolescent. I'm more than the daughter of the famous guy you want to curry favor with."

Etienne is saying, "Look at me (and my beautiful wife young enough to be my daughter)" and always striving for recognition (well displayed at the party where he forces the mogul to come over to HIM).

Sylvia, the music teacher, is certainly saying to her husband, Pierre, "Look at me, instead of obsessing over your 3rd book! For crying out loud, the other books got published and were well-reviewed." She tentatively enjoys it when the party guy really DOES look at her and they dance.

Pierre says, "Look at me," in his burning quest for publication and chasing the association with Etienne.

Karine, Etienne's young wife, probably was saying, "Look at me," when she married the famous author but then doesn't get enough of his time/attention, particularly because he's always checking out the new potential trophies. Their daughter is certainly saying, "Look at me," with all her attention-getting tantrums.

Sebastien (Raschid) is saying "Look at me as a real person, more than the stereotyped Algerian/Moroccan/Turk, unable to fit smoothly into French society."

A beautifully crafted and acted film where the director Agnes Jaoui, who incidentally plays a leading role in the film supporting and coaching, Marilou Berry as Lolita a budding singer, for me the star of the film, who has to come to terms with her father's and his immediate circle of friends individualism.

As in all good films the pace is wonderful as the protagonists are slowly bought together, egos waxing and waning as they seek out what is best for themselves and to hell with everyone else. That is except for Sebastian who early in the film senses Lolita's, unbeknown to her, egalitarianism. The film ends with Lolita's awakening to the richness of a sharing society, while the director announces where her sympathies lie courtesy of the father's hi fi player.

Yet another French cultural swipe at Hollywood. Highly recommended.

COMME UNE IMAGE (LOOK AT ME) is a tough little film that practically defies the viewer to love it. Rated as a comedy, it has few chuckles of the usual kind, but the smart tidy script delivers more of the Reformation-type comedy - wit with a bite. Writer/director and star Agnès Jaoui (her co-author is her ex-husband Jean-Pierre Bacri who also stars) is obviously an intelligent, observant, caustic chronicler of contemporary French society who dotes on celebrities at the expense of their own self-respect. Not a single character in this film is likable, but each one is fascinatingly interesting and a bit warped. Their interaction provides the venom that in Jaoui's hands raises the bar on the range of comedy.

Étienne Cassard (Jean-Pierre Bacri) is a famous writer whose latest novel has been 'transformed' into a schmaltzy film about which he is loathsomely embarrassed. He is caustic, acerbic, and emotionally negligent of both his grown obese daughter Lolita (Marilou Berry), who devotes her resentful life in an attempt to being a famous concert singer, and to his new wife Karine (Virginie Desarnauts) and little daughter. Lolita's music coach is Sylvia (Agnès Jaoui) whose demands on her students reflect her frustrated life being married to an unknown author Pierre (Laurent Grévill). Odd paths cross and it is through Lolita's influence as the daughter of a famous writer Étienne that Sylvia arranges for Pierre to join forces with Étienne and gain acceptance and popularity, but the consequences include Sylvia's increased tutelage for Lolita and her group of fellow madrigal singers.

Lolita comes the closest to being a character about whom we care. She is distraught about her weight, her distant father, her stepmother and stepsister, her inability to gain the affection for the boy of her dreams, her struggle to become a significant performer - all of which prevents her from recognizing the man who could salvage it all - Sébastien (Keine Bouhiza) who literally falls at her feet! All of these characters interact in complex and at times trying ways, ever cognizant of the 'authority of celebrity' and the results of these engagements form the body of the film. The acting is on a high level, the dialogue is crisp and smart, and the musical background for this mélange is a gorgeous mixture of classical music ranging from Buxtehude through Schubert ('An die Musik' plays a big role!) and many others. This 'comedy' is more intellectual than entertaining, but if wit and elegance of acting brings you joy, then this is a film to see. In French with subtitles at a long 2 hours! Grady Harp