 |
  
Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
|
Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
| Subscribe
About Us Features News Album
Reviews
|
Love Me If You Dare Julien and Sophie are not your typical movie lovers. True, they find each other at the tender age of eight, when Julien rescues Sophie from some particularly vicious taunting at school. And they bond over a childish game of Truth or Dare, though Truth is never an option. But instead of falling in love in their teen years, they're still playing Dare, and an especially nasty version it is. Julien makes Sophie show up for her all-important oral exams with her underwear on the outside. Sophie responds by making Julien strike a police officer. The dares escalate until Sophie is standing blindfolded on the tracks while a train bears down on her. Is there any hope for this relationship? The answer to that lies in Love Me If You Dare, a new French movie opening this weekend. Let's go back to those childhood scenes, which are probably the highlight of the film. Played by Thibault Verhaeghe and Josephine Lebas-Joly, Julien and Sophie at the age of eight are delightfully precocious and cynical children. They tease each other unmercifully (that's how we know they're made for each other) and flaunt all authority. They urinate in front of the teachers, they pull off the tablecloth at a wedding--the one that happens to hold the cake. When we see them ten years later, they're in bed together. That's no surprise, except it turns out their relationship has morphed more into brother-and-sister than teen lovers. The rest of the film skips ahead in time, stopping every couple years to find out what Sophie and Julien are up to. Wedding proposals, weddings, kids. And always the game of Dare lurking in the background. The movie is helped enormously by the acting of Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard (Big Fish) as our two protagonists. They make a splendid-looking couple, one we hope will get together even as they torment each other. Yann Samuell, in his directing debut, has so many visual ideas he doesn't know what to do with them all. One marvelous sequence involves the punishment of Adam and Eve, as seen by two children in an incredibly crowded room. Another involves Julie and Sophie reuniting in a spectacular rainstorm. But with all of Samuell's conceits, the movie struggles to find its rhythm. It's as if the sets and scenery, which are incredible, has become more important than the story. It's hard not to be reminded of Amelie at times. The bright, color-saturated production design is strikingly similar. The focus on the brilliant hue of red is reminiscent as well. And director Yann Samuell throws in various flights of fancy, just like Amelie--lovers fly through the air, etc., etc. But Love Me If You Dare is a hilariously bitter rejoinder to Amelie's optimism. Instead of a France where everyone gets along with Amelie's help, here the French are slur-spewing xenophobes. Instead of a world where everyone is perfectly suited for someone else, here your soulmate turns out to be the person who hurts you the most. And while true love solved all problems in Amelie's universe, love in Samuell's film leads either to the drudgery of a dead marriage or being encased in cement. Take your pick. Love Me If You Dare is just as artificial as Amelie, and yet I found its worldview more satisfying. Maybe I'm just a cynical soul, or maybe I'm just tired of movies telling me that all I have to do to be happy is find true love. Wherever that might be. J. Robert Parks 5/22/2004
|
|
|
|
