Comme une image (2004)

English titles: Look at Me; Like an Image.

A plump adolescent girl suffers from low self-esteem, made worse by the egocentric behavior of her father, a famous writer. She meets a young man of Arab ethnicity who becomes interested in her. Her vocal coach is married to another writer, who becomes sort of best friends with the girl's father.

An intelligent film about how the images one makes of others and of oneself are a basic driving force in human behavior. The film succeeds in achieving an overall psychological verisimilitude, but some flaws are nevertheless quite evident. For example, some characters are pretty much one-note tunes, so to speak. This is most conspicuous in the young singer's father, but it is also visible in his assistant, who is made to behave invariably in a self-humiliating way due to a debt of gratitude towards his employer. This character was not very believable, especially as his past as a political activist affords different expectations about him. There is also a verisimilitude problem in the portrayal of television literary shows, which in the film resemble a popular carnival ball (carnival the holiday, not the amusement park). I have seen a few of these literary shows and, really, they don't look anything like that. A little exaggeration is part of any satire but here the filmmakers are just being silly and snobbish. But perhaps the film's major problem is that it has too many subplots.

Rating: 63