LOOK AT ME - DVD review

It's easy to see why "Look at Me" won an award for Best Screenplay at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri pooled their talents to create an intelligent and sensitive comedy of bad manners that contains strains of a number of recognizable plots. But with interesting and complex characters, they feel brand new:

There's the overweight daughter who craves attention, mostly from her father, and the story of how she tries to curry his favor.

There's the story of a famous writer whose celebrity has swelled his head, clouded his judgment, and no doubt dragged him into a malaise that's hardly conducive to writing.

There's the story of an up-and-coming writer who craves that kind of success, but has to suck up to the famous writer in order to get it.

There's the story of a voice teacher who, like everyone else, has the impulse to use the daughter to get to her famous writer-father—but eventually regrets that impulse and tries to develop an honest relationship with the girl.

There's the story of the writer's exceptionally young wife who competes for his affections and time with his older daughter, and the inevitable strain it places on all of them.

And there's the story of an idealistic young man who wants to succeed on his own terms, and who's attracted to the slightly overweight daughter because of who she is, not who her famous father is. Not a whole lot actually happens, but our attention is drawn to the way these characters live their lives.

Etienne Cassard (Bacri) is so famous and so used to being fawned over that he thinks and acts like he's the center of the universe—so much so that he doesn't seem to respond to his daughter, even when he spends time with her. Marilou Berry is wonderfully pathetic as the ironically named Lolita, the overweight daughter who despises models and beautiful people, but has aspirations of her own . . . which, again, her father doesn't seem to notice.

The film opens with a postmodern tip-of-the-hat to self-referentiality: a darkened screen, with the spoken words in French (with English subtitles), "Can we start?" Then, "Exhale," and we're in the middle of one of Lolita's singing lessons, where she's coached by Sylvia (Jaoui). It's clear from Sylvia's body language that she thinks Lolita's "instrument" is marginal at best, and she seems on the verge of always losing patience with her mediocre student, or telling the woman she should give it up and try her hand at painting. In fact, Lolita seems to sense this as well. She's a perceptive woman through whose eyes we feel judgments of the self-centered behavior that has become endemic around her—especially in the circles I which she's accustomed to traveling with her father. Make that "tagging along," for as with the eager rock reporter in "Almost Famous," Lolita finds herself barred from entering one club through the VIP entrance after she lags behind to talk on the phone, and her father doesn't notice. To be that large and that transparent is a double annoyance for her.

Though the camera focuses on Etienne and the people whose lives orbit around him, this is really Lolita's story—so much so that it might have been named "Lolita" if her father had a fraction as much of an interest in her as Humbert Humbert did in Nabokov's novel. And the surprise for Lolita is that she has the same sort of devious and manipulative moments as her self-centered father.

The pacing is slow, but not interminably so. Call it leisurely, or real-time cinema edited for length. "Look at Me" is a rich portrait of human interaction that's full of witty lines. When Lolita's admirer, Sebastien (Keine Bouhiza) asks, "Why are you so mad at your dad?" she responds, "I'm not. I just want to kill him." And Etienne, wallowing in his own literary mire, complains, "I'm floundering. I had two good lines. Then I realized I used them in another book."

Using a mostly Mozart soundtrack and a near-constant refrain of the chorale piece that Lolita's singing group performs near the end, director Jaoui creates the perfect sense of repetition that reflects the patterns of behavior that these characters seem to find impossible to break out of. And the rest of the cast is almost as believable and compelling to watch as Bacri and Berry as the father and daughter. Sylvia's writer-husband, Pierre (Laurent Grevill), is the perfect F. Scott Fitzgerald foil to Cassard's larger-than-life Hemingway act, while Virginie Desarnanuts turns in a complex performance as the young wife and step-mom that could have been one-note in less talented hands.

Video: Mastered in High Definition on anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1), "Look at Me" has exceptional clarity and sharpness, though the color palette is suitably black and white and grey, by and large, except in party scenes when the vividness breaks out. Jaoui seems to be using color and light impressionistically, to reflect the scenes' different moods, and the picture quality doesn't waver, even with the more somber tones.

Audio: "Look at Me" has a French Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack with subtitles in English and Spanish. As with the video, the audio quality is quite good, which is made apparent during the many moments when we hear Lolita's chorus singing a cappella.

Extras: The extras are even more understated than the film. There are eight deleted scenes that stand as an unspoken tribute to the editor's skills, because almost all of them belabor points. The one scene that would have absolutely ruined the film, had it been left in, shows the normally classical-singing Lolita prancing around her bedroom like a twelve year old crooning, "My heart belongs to DAD-DY." Ugh!

As for the "making of" feature, it's extensive, but aside from section titles that flash on the screen, it's all raw rehearsal footage and behind-the-scenes action where we see the filmmakers moving at the same pace as the film itself. Film students may find it interesting, but with no voiceover commentary and no interviews to share perspectives I didn't respond to the material as much as I often do with such features.

Bottom Line: "Look at Me" is a quiet comedy that's both a satire of celebrity and the "in crowd," and a witty commentary on the maladies and affectations that result from taking a spin on that beautiful people merry-go-round. Like an upscale and urbane "Almost Famous," "Look at Me" deals with people on the fringe of fame in wry portraits that help us to appreciate the depths of their shallowness. The pacing is slower than many viewers might be used to, but the character portrayals are as rich and as delicate as a complex wine. This one is for sipping, and savoring.