Comme Une Image (Look at me)

April 13th, 2007 | Movies

Comme Une Image is a delightful, interesting comedy of manners that won the best screenplay award at Cannes.

It came into our area as part of a French Film Festival.

The story centers around a young girl coming of age. At 20, Lolita (Marilou Berry, in her first film) is mired in life with an ascerbic father (Jean-Pierre Bacri) (Jaoui’s real-life husband) and an on-again off-again non-boyfriend. Her mother presumably does yoga in the Antilles. Complicating that, is her father’s marriage to a much younger, beautiful and thin woman (Virginie Desarnauts) and their child who does little but have or be expected to have temper tantrums.

Her father is a famous writer with no interests in anybody but himself. Even his wife sees that and in a comic turn leaves him, and we see more of his self-obsessiveness. Lolita has been taken advantage of by people who only wish to get into her father’s circle. Her father’s assistant (Gregoire Oestermann) has a droll place in the story, serving to reinforce her father’s high opinion of himself.

Lolita is developing her very real talent as a singer. (The choral music is heavenly.) It is complicated by the fact that she is not thin and her self-image is worse. She wishes her father to hear a tape of her singing. He continually ceases to see her potential, calling her his ‘grand fille’ which he does not mean in a nice way. Her step-mother reaches out to her with kindness, but she misinterprets it.

Her music teacher (AgnÃ¨s Jaoui, who also co-wrote with her husband and directed the film) in a comic scene decides to continue teaching her and the choral group when she realizes who her father is because her husband (Laurent Grevill) is an aspiring writer. And when Lolita tells her how everyone has only wanted to be close to her because of her father, the scene has elements of both comedy and drama.

The film can be enjoyed on many levels, not the least is the character development. Along the way there is a love story with a young man (Keine Bouhiza) who genuinely cares for her. The movie pokes fun at various aspects of a writing career while showing human foibles in ways that are entertaining and gentle, yet precise.

There was much laughter in our audience that screened it. And also many gasped at the audacity of her father.

I think everyone there could identify with at least one of the characters. It’s well worth seeing.

Have you seen it?

Karin

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