Starring Marilou Berry, Jean-Pierre Bacri, and Agní¨s Jaoui. In French with English subtitles. Rating unavailable.

Everyone-in movies and in real life-is looking for love. But the seekers in Agní¨s Jaoui's richly satisfying Look at Me aren't nearly as concerned about the romantic stuff as they are with the plain old, accepted-as-a-human-being kind.

The writer-director's previous and equally superb first film, The Taste of Others, dealt with tribal insularity-that is, the smugness of peer groups and the uncritical self-absorption they promote. Here, Jaoui, again working from a script cowritten with her husband, John-Pierre Bacri, takes on the desperate ways people seek attention from those already close to them.

Bacri plays Etienne Cassard, an author so successful he no longer has to write. He's crankily content to be an admired boutique publisher, coveted TV guest, and occasional watcher of bad movies made from his older books. Cassard, who uses sarcasm as a mask for childish self-pity, is surrounded by yes men, including his gorgeous young second wife (Virginie Desarnauts), who seems intent on starving herself and her infant daughter.

The only person who doesn't sit well in this comfy little universe is his misnamed older daughter, Lolita (Marilou Berry, the impressive progeny of character actor Josiane Balasko), an overweight 20-year-old with a bad attitude.

Lolita is generally tired of getting ignored, if not exploited and dumped, by the people around her. But, truth be told, she doesn't do much to draw others to her. When she meets, by chance, a nice young journalism student (Keine Bouhiza) from an immigrant family, she keeps shunting him aside for a roguish user who-like almost everyone else-just wants to get to her dad.

Lolita's one saving grace is her beautiful singing voice, although her vocal teacher, the cool-tempered Sylvia (Jaoui herself), finds her off- puttingly needy. That changes when she realizes that her pupil's name is Cassard. On finally meeting the famous writer, Sylvia is initially infatuated, but when he takes an avuncular and vaguely corrupting interest in her husband, Pierre (Laurent Grévill), a barely published writer, she starts to have her doubts.

As in The Taste of Others, Jaoui is masterful at misdirection. She plays with the viewer's expectations as to time frame and emotional alliances-you want to root for these people but they keep doing dumb things, and at odd moments. She's not formally experimental, but the director is an unsentimental humanist who rewards your close attention with surprises that always ring true.

Furthermore, the film plays with our fixation on fame and how it relates to the infantile impulse of the fairly bland title. (The film's French name, Comme une Image, isn't a lot better.) And its hauntingly expert use of classical music-everything is built around a concert Lolita's choral group is planning for a country church-suggests that some things really do last, apart from the fashions of the moment.