THE writer/director Agnès Jaoui and her co-writer Jean-Pierre Bacri are trying to order lunch. Everyone in the room is soon involved in a bilingual debate. “What is this ‘chard’?” asks a bewildered Bacri as if he suspects that it might be something rather disreputable. Nobody can agree on a suitable translation. Meanwhile, Jaoui smirks behind her cigarette.

It’s like a chaotic scene from one of their ensemble comedies. And it prompts the question: if they can’t agree on lunch, how on earth do they manage to write some of the sharpest, funniest scripts in French cinema? Jaoui comments dryly: “It’s a long process, yes; we are not quick writers at all.”

The writing takes place from three in the afternoon until seven in the evening. “We both have a notebook and a pencil. We discuss the theme of the film, and little by little, we begin to decide things, characters. And after six, seven, eight months, we begin the dialogue.”

These rigidly scheduled blocks of writing time are crucial for the pair — in addition to being writing partners, they are also a couple. Jaoui says: “After the meeting I refuse to speak about the movie again. Of course, it’s the kind of work that you think about all day long — you are on the train, you are watching another movie, suddenly you think of something. But it’s important to just notice and not speak at once to your partner, otherwise it is tiring and confusing.”

It’s a collaborative process that, although time consuming, has been very productive. Look at Me (Comme une image) (see review, page 10) is the sixth script that they have written together (others include Un air de famille, On connaît la chanson and Jaoui’s directorial debut, The Taste of Others). Both fine actors as well as writers, they regularly appear in roles they themselves created.

Look at Me is the second of their joint screenplays that Jaoui has directed. Bacri says of handing over control: “We are a good team because we haven’t got the same desires.”

Nor the same recollection of their previous films, it seems. When I ask whether Jaoui’s decision to direct was a result of dissatisfaction with the way that other film-makers had handled their work, they reply simultaneously — Jaoui in the negative and Bacri the affirmative. “There were small frustrations for me. For you, no?” says Bacri, eyebrows raised. “No, ” replies Jaoui firmly. “And it was difficult for me to decide to do it because before, people like Alain Resnais directed our screenplays. But from the beginning I was writing and having images in my head. And in fact Resnais helped me to, because he was so quiet and nice as a director.”

If Jaoui seems confident at the helm of Look at Me, that’s partly because she left the first-time nerves on her directorial debut. But mainly it is because many of the themes that this film addresses are ones that are directly relevant to her — music, the pressure to conform to a certain kind of image and the tricky relationship between a daughter and her father.

Central to the film is Lolita (Marilou Berry), an intense, attractive but slightly overweight young woman who craves the approval — or even just the attention — of her father, Etienne (Bacri). He is a writer, publisher and literary personality who has been rendered intolerable by success and power. When Etienne notices his daughter, it’s to criticise her appearance or to compare her unfavourably with his young trophy wife. Lolita is a music student with a voice that her teacher Sylvia (Jaoui) thinks has promise. But although Sylvia is loath to admit it, her interest in the girl is augmented by the fact that Etienne has promised to help her own husband’s foundering writing career.

“It’s very autobiographical,” says Jaoui, who has studied and performed music since she was 17 and whose relationship with her father hit a sticky phase when he started dating a younger woman. “In fact he didn’t remarry,” she says of her father, “but he went with a girl my age. I hated her. And the worst thing was, he was calling her the same nickname as me — Anouska. It’s very strange anyway to see your father or mother with someone else. But then when she is so young . . . She was a nice girl, in fact, but I was unable to accept.”

Jaoui is quick to point out that the character of Etienne was not based on her father. She does however admit that she and Bacri did have specific people in mind when they created the character. “I am unable to invent characters. For this one we had four models. Two were quite egocentric but charismatic and not too nasty. Two were awful characters, much worse even than this one. Our work was to navigate between the two opposites. Not to make him too nice, but not too nasty, because we wanted people to understand that we can be fascinated by this kind of person.”

And while Bacri admits that his part was tremendous fun to play, he found it particularly hard to play a scene in which Etienne flatly ignores Jaoui’s character. Jaoui recalls: “Jean-Pierre was tempted to look at me normally, to listen to me. And I said, ‘No, don’t look at me. I don’t exist’.”

There’s a fantastic scene towards the end of the film in which Bacri’s character joins an audience to listen to his daughter sing for the first time. Dressed in black that sets off her dramatic colouring, singing with a passion and confidence she can never achieve in normal life, she looks beautiful. The camera pans across a visibly transported audience to Etienne. He’s fidgeting with irritation and boredom.

Jaoui smiles at the memory. “People are so disappointed because they are waiting as the camera pans across and finally we get to Jean-Pierre. In an American movie,” she adds with satisfaction, “I think he would have come round.”

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