Movie review
Look at Me Reviewed by Diana DeFazio and Heather Adams
(110 minutes)
LOOK AT ME is a French black comedy/drama about self-absorption.
Lolita (Marilou Berry) is the 20-year old daughter of Etienne Cassard (Jean-Pierre Bacri), a well-known editor and writer in Paris. While Lolita, an aspiring singer, is crippled by her dependence on her egotistical father’s approval, he could not be more disinterested in her.
Lolita’s voice coach, Sylvia (Agnes Jaoui) is married to Pierre (Laurent Grévill), a struggling novelist who has just published a new book. Sylvia takes a new interest in coaching Lolita when she finds out that her father is the Etienne Cassard. Through this connection, the couple are invited to accompany Etienne and his trophy wife (Virginie Desarnauts) to their country home. As Sylvia and Pierre spend more time with the Cassards and enter into the Paris literati, they begin to ignore their commitments to their bohemian friends and colleagues and become more estranged from one another.
The people we meet in the aptly titled LOOK AT ME are incapable of seeing others. Self-interest is their modus operandi as they seek advancement and success through their associations and measure their self-worth by the opinions of others. Lolita is begging to be recognized, but even she fails to see the only person—Sebastian (Keine Bouhiza)—who has sincere interest in her.
As the movie bumps along, we realize a common thread connecting the characters: they suffer from different yet similarly fatalistic forms of self-obsession. The pudgy Lolita is obsessed with her weight and with winning her father’s approval. Her father is obsessed with the fact that he hasn’t written a single new line in six months. His young wife is obsessed with preventing their five-year old daughter from developing an eating disorder.
The characters feebly attempt to swim, but ultimately drown in their self-prescribed misery. And this is the key to our problem with the film—it did not do enough to counter its cynicism. Change comes too late and it is not a profound enough transformation, so it seems just as shallow as our league of French doom-and-gloomers themselves.
LOOK AT ME is well-acted and does a good job of showing the corrupting force of celebritydom. But the film beat us over the head with dysfunction, leaving us uninspired. We weren’t moved enough by the characters or their predicaments. LOOK AT ME is overstated.
Note: The reviewers had a slight difference of opinion on this one. While Heather found the film to be annoying, frustrating and boring, Diana was more empathetic towards the self-pitying Lolita and slightly more entertained by the dark humor. We agreed that watching the miserable lives of the elite unfold for two hours did little to inspire or entertain.
Entertainment Value: 1 1/2 stars
Meaning: 2 1/2 stars
Emotional Impact: 1 1/2 stars
Lack of Gratuitous Violence or Sex: 3 1/2 stars
Lack of Advertising: 3 1/2 stars
Overall Quality: 2 1/2 stars
Overall Impact: 1 1/2 stars
(Out of four stars)