I recently watched a beautiful French film called Jeux d'enfants ... or as the American title kills it ... Love Me If You Dare.  And that dear folks is exactly what the film does.  Dares you to love it in spite of  the craziness going on and how shocked you are by the actions of the lead characters..

This is a film about two kids who grow up to be two adults who have a very strange friendship/relationship/love.  They keep daring each other to do things and the dares must be done.  This is no childish cutesy American made teen flick where a guy dares his friend to take a not yet pretty girl to the dance.  This is a dark comedy about two people who need each other so much that they're willing to do whatever the other says.  It's what Heathers would have been if both Christian Slater and Winona Ryder's characters had been insane.

Be it peeing on the floor of the principal's office when they were 8, to proving that yes they can hurt each other dreadfully when they were 25, to initiating a police chase that ends in what could be a horrible accident at 35.

My dear leader Roger Ebert lost the dare, because he as he said in his review ... loathed the characters.  He didn't like them and he didn't like their premise.  Me thinks dear Roger missed the whole point.

And no one seems to understand them. Not Ebert and certainly not Julien's father who like Ebert, loathes Sophie and basically blames her for everything because she's clearly the bolder one.

But like I said they're both missing the point.  Here are two people who say they're willing to do anything ... who play like they're 'game' for anything, but in the one thing that truly matters to them ...They're too scared to even contemplate it.  Love.

Yes they love each other, but both are too scared to be the first to say it and as Sophie said to a strange guy she'd never met, because she couldn't say it to Julian ... she didn't want to say it in case he didn't say it back.

And that's the point here.  Yes their relationship isn't normal and yes it could easily be defined as madness ... but isn't that what love is?  I mean true love that you read about and dream about and wish you could experience just once because you know it would be so perfect.  But hardly anyone does because we're all too scared ... too chicken ... too SANE, to take that risk.

Loving each other, is to Sophie and Julien a far bigger risk, than anything else they did.  And that's quite understandable to me.  Anyone can dare you to do anything.  Jump out of a plane, swim with sharks, shoot someone ... because you always know that one of two ... or three situations could occur.  Death, jail or an experience that you can file away to have as an anecdote for when you're old and the grandkids come to visit.

But what guarantees do you have with love?  None.  Not death, not happiness, not jail ... unless you're in love with jailbait ... but still.  There is no way you can never guarantee ANYTHING about how love will turn out, how it will end, how long it could flourish or even if it truly exists at all.

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