You can hope that someone will love you ... but there's no real guarantee.  You can hope that you find love in your life ... but again there's no guarantee.  And even if you do find love and you do find someone to love you ... you can't guarantee that it will last past the admissions.

Love is the biggest risk anyone can make and the fact that Sophie and Julien were clearly willing to risk everything else, other than that ... well the title sums it up.  Love me if you dare ... neither of them wanted to even touch that dare because they didn't want to see the outcome if neither of them couldn't.

So no my dear Ebert .. it's not that they were crazy because of the things they did ... it's that they were very NORMAL for the one thing that they couldn't.  That they didn't want to risk.  It was easier to marry other people or try to hate each other than to risk falling in love and ending up with their hearts broken if their love wasn't reciprocated.

They both wanted acceptance when they first met.  Sophie because she was a foreigner and the other little kids were complete shits ... and Julien because the only person that seemed to understand him up to that point was his beloved mother and she'd just found out that she was dying that day.

So his meeting the one person ... in my opinion anyway ... who would love him as completely and easily as she did ... well it was fate as my dear Theresa likes to say.

And as much as Julien's father acted like he hates Sophie ... what I find interesting is that after the mother's funeral, HE was the one that brought Sophie and Julien closer.  Because he knew he couldn't deal with his son ... or maybe because he simply didn't want to deal with his son, so he had Sophie come over and she stayed for the next ten years.

When he was at a loss, he called the one person he knew could make his son happy and then still in later years tried to piss all over the relationship they had and make it seem as though Sophie was to blame for everything.

I laughed out loud several times at the audaciousness of these kids and the dares they made for each other.  So I have no problem recommending this movie ... maybe you'll agree with Ebert and hate the characters ... maybe you won't and you'll agree with me, but either way ... It's definitely worth the risk to see the movie.

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