LOOK AT ME'S generic-sounding title crystallizes an unvoiced and unanswered wish 20-year-old Lolita (Marilou Berry) has obsessed over her whole life: that her famous author-publisher father, Étienne Cassard (Jean-Pierre Bacri), might actually notice, approve of, and love her. Fat, uh, chance. Plump and insecure (she looks a lot like a pre-aerobicized Ricki Lake), the cruelly named Lolita is a timorous misfit in dad's glittering world of power, prestige, and much younger women attracted by the same – including his perfectly thin, blond second wife, Karine (Virginie Desarnauts). What's worse, Cassard treats Lolita, an awkward reminder of his failed first marriage, as just that. Searching for approval and a parental substitute, Lolita fixes on her classical voice teacher, Sylvia (Look at Me's writer-director Agnès Jaoui), who doesn't need the burden – but changes her attitude upon discovering the girl's lofty paternal connection. Not only is Sylvia a huge fan of Cassard's, but her spouse, Pierre (Laurent Grévill), is a self-pitying mope of a novelist who could sorely use a celebrity scribe's endorsement. With some misgivings about exploiting the situation, Sylvia does make that connection, and the men turn out to be two peas in a pod – meaning that once success arrives, Pierre "blossoms" into an A-list intellectual just as snobbish, self-involved, roving-eyed, and bridge-burning as his mentor. Meanwhile, Lolita blunders by fixing her romantic hopes on a boy who – like nearly everyone else she's ever met – uses her to access golden-ass papa, while misreading the intentions of the one suitor who is interested only in her. Look at Me is one of those talky French ensemble movies that, since time immemorial (or at least since early Rohmer), have sounded only vaguely interesting in description and sometimes end up being no more than that in execution. On not infrequent occasions, however, they turn out absolutely riveting, like a great novel. Jaoui (cowriter of Alain Resnais's 1997 Same Old Song) has crafted a drama whose brilliant wit, pathos, and insight all rise organically out of characters and relationships that couldn't be more credible or intriguing. The rest of 2005 will have to spring some mighty big surprises for Look at Me to get elbowed off year-end best lists – or mine, at least. (Dennis Harvey)