Friday, February 20, 2009
Posted by me:) at 9:37 PM









I shall recommend a movie to everyone who's reading this:














Jeux d'enfants(Are you game?/ Love me if you dare)



This is a french film from writer/director Yann Samuell. Yes, it does seem like a very sappy and gay romance movie judging from the title. But NO, it's a very interesting and fun romance movie.


A story of two best friends, Julien and Sophie who we see journey through life. Starts of in their childhood and their seemingly playful game in which they dare each other with a rustic tin. The game continues throughout their adult life and begins to spiral out of control, and a hidden love undeclared.(http://www.flixster.com/movie/love-me-if-you-dare-jeux-denfants)

The tale starts, as many classic fairytales do, with two unhappy children. Julien is endlessly energetic and precociously brilliant, but unable to bear the impending heartbreak of his beloved mother's death. Sophie is wildly imaginative, mischievous and determined to be different, yet in search of someone to accept and love her.


When they meet one another, everything changes. They begin what seems to be a child's momentary amusement. Every time they exchange a symbolic tin box (a gift to Julien from his mother), the one who takes the toy also has to take a dare. The pranks they force one another to play range from talking dirty in class to crashing a wedding buffet - but each one becomes a little bigger, a little more irreverent, a little riskier than the last. Soon, the game has become something far larger and more thrilling than the sad and disappointing world around them. Despite the constant trouble they get into, Julien and Sophie cannot stop the game's mad, wild and often destructive rush. When Julien's mother passes away, leaving him bereft, the game is the only thing that continues to matter. Even when they go off to college, the game continues, progressing into more difficult, bizarre and often crueler challenges, each and every new dare seemingly a way for Julien and Sophie to drive one another further away, to avoid admitting they are crazily in love with one another. The harder they compete with one another, the less they are able to communicate their emotions. When they finally reach adulthood, Julien growing more serious, Sophie even more of a libertine -- the uncompromising, child-like nature of the game comes into question. Now Julien and Sophie must choose between the game and their careers, between the game and their spouses-to-be, between the game and the conventions of everyday life. Yet . . . how can they resist? Just when they think it all over and life has become banal, the game is afoot again, and they realize they want it to go on and on, without end. It might have taken them a lifetime to say I love you but Julien and Sophie manage in their own inimitable style to capture the moment forever. Julien and Sophie's surreal game is the very essence of love, which can be at once playful and freeing, while also filled with lunacy and destruction. It's a story of two people searching for a kind of pure and primal freedom beyond the structures of banal, everyday existence. It is a fantasy, a cartoon, a fairy tale. The film is also a reflection of how the intense ecstasies and fantasies of childhood haunt us, tempt us and call to us in our adult lives, even as we face mature relationships and grown-up ambitions. ( http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/love_me_if_you_dare/ )




Watch it. It's good, makes you laugh and cry simulataneously.