2008 Woodie Awards
Don't Look at 'Look At Me'
Neelofer Qadir
Issue date: 3/16/05 Section: Arts & Entertainment
- Page 1 of 2 next >
|
Cast: Marilou Berry, Agnés Jaoui, Jean-Pierre Bacri
Screenplay by Agnés Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri
Director: Agnes Jaoui
Release date: 22 September 2004
"I am a zero," Lolita told Sébastien, setting the scene for the entire movie.
Distributor Sony Pictures called Look At Me a "bittersweet comedy, mak[ing] fun of the relentless egoism of those obsessed with looks and celebrity."
Throw in the fact that it's a French film, which won Best Screenplay at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and you've got a pretty excited reviewer thinking this little foreign film would blow up and blossom into something akin to Sophia Coppola's Lost In Translation (See "Lost and Loving It" by Art Lowe, Pace Press: 03 Sept. 2003).
The idea of poking fun at a superficial society is brilliant but the sub-par acting and poor screenplay landed Look At Me a first-class ticket on a train speeding right to mediocrity. Despite the fact that Jaoui wanted to highlight the female characters, the male performances outshine them by quite a mark. Jean-Pierre Barci (Etienne) was the only solid actor, invoking both sympathy and disgust within the viewer at appropriate marks.
Look At Me is primarily the story of a 20-year-old Lolita, furious at the world and especially her father for neglecting her because she isn't the stick-thin beauty the world expects its women to be. Interwoven in Lolita's story are the trials of her father, Etienne, her voice teacher, Sylvia and Sylvia's husband, Pierre the writer with little faith in his work.
Lolita spends most of the movie training for a choral concert to be presented at a church near their country home. Along the way, she runs into problems with nearly everyone she encounters: all the male figures in her life from her father to her pseudo-boyfriend, who is using her to meet her father (Mathieu) and the guy who actually cares about her (Sébastian) to her stepmother (Karine), who is often mistaken for Etienne's daughter instead of his wife.
Any sympathy the viewer might want to have for Lolita and the emotional abuse she is subjected to by her father and Mathieu is literally shot down the drain because of her snobby, bratty attitude. One could easily mistake her for a five-year-old, given the way she snootily dismisses most everything that doesn't catch her fancy and latches onto those things that do, however temporary her fascination with them.