Love Me If You Dare

Never have I hated two characters more than I do Julien and Sophie. Good god. I hate them.

I just watched the French film "Jeux D'Enfants," or "Love Me If You Dare" in English. Yes, it's the cheesiest title you've ever heard. Before I watched the film, I had already thought about how I was going to defend the film to whoever hears about me watching this film. "Oh, yeah, it's a cheesy title, but it's such an interesting plot for a film." And it is. But oh my sweet death, it is a terrible film.

The plot is this--a boy and girl have a tin box, and whoever possesses the box gets to dare the other to do whatever they want. And the other person always does it, which I don't understand, especially towards the end. But it starts out with small stuff as kids (relatively): pulling the table cloth onto the floor at a wedding, saying dirty words in class, peeing in front of the principal. But it gets progressively worse. Sophie dares Julien to have sex with a girl just to get her earrings. Julien does it, and in the process forces the girl to miss a test and subsequently fail it. Another dare is that they both slap Igor, the gym teacher, whenever they see him. They just keep doing it, over and over, until they see him crying, and then they stop.

That's what I don't understand. These two people do whatever they are dared, no matter who it hurts, no matter whose lives are disturbed. Julien chooses Sophie over his father. At one point, the couple dare each other not to see one another for ten years. They actually do it, and in that span they both get married to different people, Julien has kids, and they construct different lives. But after ten years to the day, Julien is mailed the tin box and goes to Sophie's house. The place is in shambles, as if a burglar had been there. But get this--Sophie had done the damage, called the police right as Julien got there, and dared him to outrun them. And as he runs in his car, a voice over narration tells the audience that the game with Sophie is better than anything, even life.

The game has a strange ending, to say the least. The two decide to have themselves buried alive in concrete, as one final dare that they can both do together. As the cement rises in this deep pit, the two kiss and hold one another, until they are solidified in the ground. Why in the world? I don't understand. And then, it seems as if the filmmaker's show an alternate ending, during the movie. It shows two old people misbehaving in a retirement center, doing things that identify them as Julien and Sophie. So does this mean that they didn't actually get buried, that it was all a fake? Or does this mean that by being buried alive together, they got to somehow grow old together? I have no idea.

I gathered that this film was trying to say that love is worth any cost, whether that is someone else's feelings, your own sanity, or even life. And that is why I hate this movie. It was filmed well, had good construction, and I wanted so badly to love these characters. But there is no way. If two people loved each other and expressed it by doing things like this, I would have them legally separated for the good of humanity.