Comme une image

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

20 year-old Lolita (Marilou Berry) aspires to be a singer.

More than this, she desperately wants attention - any attention - from her father Étienne (Jean-Pierre Bacri), a self-absorbed novelist whose neglect of his daughter and rudeness to those around him borders on the cruel.

Overweight and lacking in self-confidence, Marilou isn't helped by her assumption that those who befriend her view her only as a route to her famous and successful father.

This certainly seems true of Lolita's singing teacher Sylvia (Agnès Jaoui), whose husband Pierre (Laurent Grévill) is an aspiring writer himself.

And although Sébastien (Keine Bouhiza), whom Lolita meets by chance, seems genuine in his intentions, Lolita's fragile self-esteem and obsession with her father seem destined to thwart any future they might have.

Emotionally damaged, self-serving or merely flawed, this ensemble of eminently believable characters is superbly played under Agnès Jaoui's fluid direction.

Add in an intelligent and witty screenplay (co-written by Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri) and you have a poignant yet subtly comical film that goes to the heart of the issue of fame and the affect on those in and around its spotlight.

If this were Hollywood, you might expect a sugar-coated resolution to the relationship difficulties portrayed.

Here, the characters remain true to themselves and the integrity of the film.

© Copyright Diana Betts / Film247.net 2004

The film begins with a character speaking on her cellphone but unable to be heard because the taxi driver is playing his radio at such a loud volume -- which is a fitting preface to the rest of the film, in which characters try desperately not only to be seen (as in the title, translated only approximately from the French "Comme Une Image"), but to be heard. At the heart of the story is a daughter's inability to be heard, quite literally, by her father -- who will rarely acknowledge his daughter and refuses to listen to his daughter's cassette of her singing classical music. Aside from the main father/daughter relationship, the film is full of types that are at once fresh and recognizable (the unctuous friend of the celebrity, the slightly defeated wife of an author, who has subsumed her own passions for music to his passion to be a famous author). This will come as no surprise to those familiar with Jaoui's other work. Though not groundbreaking cinema, Look At Me is two hours very well spent in a theater.

A superb comedy/drama. Agnés Jaoui, who co-wrote and directed, also has a major acting role in this story of several people who buzz around a self-centered, rich and famous writer and publisher. His teenage daughter, Lolita, who is desperate for his attention, is pretty and a talented singer, but overweight, with low self-esteem. She is resigned to guys asking her out in order to get the opportunity to pitch projects to her father. Jaoui is the Lolita's voice teacher. She also uses the young women to advance her husband's unsuccessful writing career, but later comes to regret her actions. Marilou Berry is fine as Lolita. Jean-Pierre Bacri gives a human face to the egotistical father. Bacri makes him a man who simply cannot understand how his actions – no matter how cruel – could possibly be taken badly. All of the other performers, including Jaoui, do outstanding jobs. This is the kind of character-driven comedy that we hope to get every time we see a new Woody Allen movie. But Woody has disappointed us for so long and so many times that maybe we can now recognize a new talented triple-threat. I am already looking forward to the next Agnés Jaoui film.

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.