Lolita (Marilou Berry), heroine of French drama Look At Me, begins her movie struggling to make herself heard over the clatter of a taxi driver's noisy stereo. This fight to make people listen, it soon becomes clear, is the perfect metaphor for her lonely life.
No one wants to communicate with this particular Lolita, least of all her father, publisher and respected author Étienne (Jean-Pierre Bacri). Around this foul-tempered egomaniac - - think of him as a literary Tony Soprano - - the other characters orbit. Before long, the respect he demands from those around him has caused relationships to warp and friendships to disintegrate.
Agnès Jaoui's intelligent drama is about everyday tyranny and what happens to a family when an ego is allowed to expand unchecked. Played beautifully by a hard-working ensemble cast, with Berry setting the pace with her astonishing transformation from dowdy, alienated misfit into an artist in her own right, this is witty, thoughtful stuff.
