A deceptively simple but inventive and affecting pic about the obsession to film life rather than live it, My Camera and Me limns a guy who, from ages 6 to 36, rarely lifts his finger off the trigger of a camera pointed at daily events. The urge to document and the struggle to connect are explored with considerable humor and a pleasant melancholy as our hero, Max (Zinedine Soualem), falls for a sensual blind girl (Julie Gayet). Max narrates a first-person odyssey into which his increasingly sophisticated home movies are interjected. His emotional education - and he has a lot to learn - takes place as much via his viewfinder as via his genitals. Soualem, who has a gift for subtle visual humor, is spot-on, and as the masseuse Gayet convinces in every nuance.
Lisa Nesselson