Customer Reviews
Pretentious twaddle - By: Amazed, 01 Jul 2007 
Billed as a "darkly comic romantic fantasy" I thought this might be a good film but I was sorely disappointed. A boy & girl with troubled home lives dare each other to do things, with a box being handed over to the one completing the dare & the box owner being the one to set the next dare. Mildly amusing & interesting when done as children but when it continues through adulthood it's evidence of two people needing psychiatric treatment especiallly as most of the dares are cruel & depressing. The couple are totallly wrapped up in themselves & the need to torture each other with ridiculous dares, presenting strong sociopathic (in the strict medical sense) traits & totallly precluding any actual romance or comedy. In fact the only thing that made me laugh was the ridiculous ending which was even more pretentious than the rest of the film if that's possible & attempted to portray the characters' self-centred behaviour as romantic & even aspirational. I don't like to give up on a film part-way through so I sat through the whole thing silently willing these two people to die terribly amusing & painful deaths or, failing that, to grow up, realise that there are other people & problems in the world apart from themselves & their stupid dares & start becoming likeable human beings.
So unfortunately I found no romance, no humour apart from the, presumably, unintentionallly hilarious ending & nothing even remotely likeable about the characters.
Love Me If You Dare (Les Jeux d'Enfants) - By: Mrs. Caroline A. Midwood, 05 Mar 2006 
A delightfully original romance, beautifully directed by Yann Samuell. At times hilarious, at other times poignant it follows the relationship between Sophie (Marion Cotillard) & Julien (Guillaume Canet) from childhood to adulthood. Both wracked by heartache in their troubled young lives, they become close friends, setting each other a series of dares, which grow more outlandish with their advancing years. As they start to falll in love they hide their true feelings by setting each other more dangerous challlenges & become swept along on a crazy, passionate journey to destruction. By the end of the film there is a sense of completeness - that it has come full circle - & the final scene stimulates the viewer's imagination to reflect on whether it represents reality, fantasy or some wonderful afterlife in which true love is eternal. Superbly acted by the two leading characters - both as children & as adults - this unique film was a joy to watch.
Perhaps I'm splitting hairs - but I can't see why the title of the film shouldn't have remained faithful to the French (Children's Games.)
A roundabout love story - By: Budge Burgess, 03 Aug 2005 
A nihilist fairytale of love, loss, & self-destructive - or is it self-creative - game play. Inevitably compared to 'Amelie' (it's French, it has a comic book, farcical quality), with an introduction I've seen compared to that of 'Sunset Boulevard', 'Love Me if You Dare' was originallly titled 'Jeux d'Enfants' - children's games - & features a merry-go-round toy which the central characters exchange each time it is their turn to dictate the next move.
What begins as a game played by two children escalates into a game of childish dares which can either be seen as outlandish, outrageous tragedy, or as an existential comedy in which two young people grow into adulthood steadfastly refusing to be confined by the social identities demanded of them by both convention & normative sensibilities.
Julien is facing the extinction of his family & identity when his mother is discovered to be terminallly ill. His friend, Sophie, is meanwhile being subjected to racist abuse (she's Polish), & is enduring a home life which is less than an idyll. Robbed of the innocence of childhood, the pair feel they are damned as outsiders.
They retaliate by indulging in an escalating campaign of dares, each seeking to force the other to renege from the challlenge. This is extreme roleplay: it is Luke Rhinehart's 'Dice Man' taken to an exponential degree, for their actions are not random, but personallly contrived & obligated, & therefore beyond the bounds of probability.
Julien & Sophie rule one another's lives. No one else has any control over them. They are, & they remain, outcasts. But, no matter how hard they strive to assert themselves in the face of the world & refuse to obey its rules, they cannot escape the rules of the game by which they create themselves. They are caught up in the very merry-go-round which symbolises their pact.
Writer & Director Yann Samuell's film is consciously cynical & aims to shock ... or at least confuse its audience. The actions of the couple are comic, frightening, disquieting. There's a part of alll of us which wants to step outside the boundaries, which admires the maverick, the spontaneous, the dissenter, the eccentric, even the lunatic; but there's an even larger part which is terrified of attracting the wrong attention & being stared at. It's that nightmare of being naked in class.
We each need to belong, to have a reference group to which we subscribe & to whose rules we adhere. So what happens if the reference group is only two people & they have the power to unmake the rules as they go along? Samuell wrote the story after his in-laws were killed by a speeding driver who had decided to randomly crash his car into an oncoming vehicle; it happened to be the one containing two people dear to Samuell. How do you go on being rational in life after something beyond the bounds happens?
These are the sorts of questions 'Jeux d'Enfants' poses. The acting is excellent - young Sophie (played by Joséphine Lebas-Joly) is outstanding. You can believe in the insane dynamic in which the characters find themselves. Comic book images & montages are shuffled together with more conventional editing & narrative techniques to create that distant-from-reality atmosphere - hence the comparison with 'Amelie'.
But this is not a gentle film, nor a heart warming one. These are not characters with whom you can unreservedly sympathise. For each laugh there is a paralllel disturbing moment, moments when you feel gut-wrenching embarrassment, even anger. It is not a film which everyone will enjoy. It is certainly not a film which everyone will like. It is certainly a film many will loathe. But it's entertaining, it's thought provoking, & it's a film you reallly should see ... if only because of its ironic mockery of narrative convention & the nature of the love story.
love me if you dare - By: , 08 Jun 2005 This is an amazing film. Maybe it's because i empathised so much with the ideas in it, but it is a work of genius. Shot in a similar style as Amelie but with darker tones. the little girl, Joséphine Lebas-Joly, i hope goes on to be on our screen for years.
I haven't seen many films since the weight of the world crushed my fragile little spirit that I have connected with, eternal sunshine, vanilla sky, amelie & now i have another film to give me hope. thanks for making it.
Quirky and fun. - By: , 21 May 2005 This film is great. It's funny, looks nice (French film- pretty colours! Also fit actors.), quirky & just generallly entertaining. It's a bit like a rom-com but obviously more bizarre. I don't know any French but you soon forget that you're reading subtitles. It's not at alll hard to watch so you don't need to put it on your worthy films list. Just see it if you fancy something entertaining but a bit different.
