21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Obsession, April 24, 2005
"Look at Me" (Comme Une Image) is sophisticated, smart, witty, incisively written and a cogent look at New Millennium Celebrity and it's effects on family and friends.
As opposed to the USA, except for a few exceptions like Stephen King, in France, writers are revered and celebrated as much, and sometimes more, than Movie and TV stars.
Jean Pierre Bacri plays Etienne Cassard, a famous writer around whom several people revolve: his pretty but plump daughter forlornly named Lolita (Marilou Berry), his young trophy wife Karine (Virginie Desarnauts) and Sylvia and Pierre Miller (Agnes Jaoui and Laurent Grevill): Sylvia is Lolita's voice teacher and Pierre is an unsuccessful writer who lucks into a meeting with Cassard through the connection between his wife and her pupil.
Lolita is like her father is some ways, mostly negative though: she rails at her friends and family in a bratty way and though she resents her father's wealth and social position she has no qualms about asking him for money or using his name as a way a garnering friendships. On the other hand she is shy, too self-conscious about her Ruebenesque figure and in one scene doesn't have the guts to demand access to a party given in her father's honor.
Lolita craves a boy named Matthieu, who openly flirts and even kisses other girls in front of her and yet, when she meets someone who actually likes her for herself, Sebastien, she has no idea how to deal with him.
Bacri's Etienne Cassard is a smug, opinionated, stuck on himself emotional thug: he wants all the love and admiration yet offers nothing in return but ridicule and a kind of feigned love. He is rude to waiters, to cab drivers: all of those people that he feels are beneath him in social status. His idea of parenting is to complain to his young wife, while they are weekending in the country: "Can't you keep that kid quiet...I came out here for some peace and quiet."
Marilou Berry plays Lolita like the ultimate victim but, like her father, she can be irritating and irritable: she cries, pouts and generally acts like a big spoiled brat. But Lolita has a heart and is capable of love, if not the wherewithal emotionally to recognize it when it is 12 inches from her face.
The emotional world of "Look at Me" is the world of the dysfunctional: both emotionally and socially these people operate at the highest level...and because they are famous, they are tolerated at least and loved at best.
As directed and written by Agnes Jaoui and co-written by Bacri, "Look At Me" is about our obsession with the surface of things: if he/she is beautiful then he/she must be ok, happy, fulfilled. More to the point "LAM" is about how we've become obsessed with celebrity and how this pursuit of fame and fortune can obfuscate, alter forever and derange our lives and relationships.
"Look At Me" is ultimately then, an acidic look at the pursuit of fame, at the celebrity derived from fame and at the exorbitant price we must pay in human currency for it's fleeting, always ready to move on costly pleasures.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What price glory?, August 19, 2005
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 likeable, 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, August 05
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
with love, May 31, 2005
I believe that films are suppose to make the world a better place. no body is perfect. there is no "hero".
Look AT ME is a film about people (not perfect people) made for people (as perfect as we can be). it is gentle and touching and made me think how can I becaome a better person, it made me laugh and cry about our behaviour and at the end, filled me with hope and with love.
"look at me" is a human need
the acting, score, dialog, editing are faboules. I wish to thank the director for giving me another gift.
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