The French language has a corner on elegance and sensuality, as moviegoers have known for decades.
But the Pythonesque sense of “your mother was a hamster’ also underscores how the Gallic tongue has a good handle on petulance and insult as well, both in great evidence for the maddening drama “Look at Me.’
Rarely does a director assemble a set of characters so infantile in their emotions and so irritating to be around – at least if they want anyone to actually pay to see the movie. The widespread whining of the adults in “Look at Me’ makes it difficult to stick around for writer-director Agnes Jaoui’s eventual payoff. There is a reward; it’s just beyond me to ask everyone to wait for it.
The plot focuses on 20-year-old Lolita (Marilou Berry), who fights her weight and her crippling desire for approval from a distant intellectual father Etienne (Jean-
Pierre Bacri). Etienne is an old goat with a skinny trophy wife close to Lolita’s age; he disdains Lolita’s efforts to become a singer and seems incapable of paternal affection – unless Lolita’s cute stepsister is underfoot, in which case Etienne makes a point of complimenting the tyke at the expense of Lolita.
But everyone has a complaint in this movie, from the first moment when Lolita enters a cab. She argues with the cabbie, who plays annoyingly loud music, then her father argues with the cabbie, and the tone is set.
“Look at Me’ will curdle your brie and sour your brandy, if you’re assuming all those languid Provence dinner parties are filled with philosophy and goodwill.
The bickering does build to a climax, though, as much as that possibility seems in doubt for two-thirds of the plot. Lolita has a choir performance in a rural church, and the event brings together all the major characters: Her insufferable father, the voice coach who admires him, the voice coach’s writer-husband dragging his own raft of insecurity, the sulking boyfriend, the high-strung stepmother.
Everyone acts in character, yet there is room for hope the next generation can overcome inherited egoism.
Jaoui is a classical singer herself, and acts the part of Sylvia, the voice coach. Her musical gifts lend the script and the singing scenes a moving authenticity, and she makes a convincing argument near the end for the transforming beauty provided by a true work of art.
Whether audiences can persevere to that epiphany is a matter of some doubt. Jaoui has made her characters so believably self-absorbed that many viewers will be loath to lend them their attention span.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
