It is common for English productions to use kids on the cinematic screen as an outlet to exhibit a natural, carefree side of love—a playful facet that the main characters usually outgrow as they age. Take Sundays at Tiffany’s (2012) as an example. The dynamic of dares is also a frequent narrative approach in the romance genre to highlight how challenging love can be, visible in stories like Dash & Lily (2020).
However, if there is something unique about French cinema, it is that it rarely takes narratives in such a linear direction. In one of his most acclaimed films, Love Me If You Dare (2003), Yann Samuell takes the same conventions, but subverts them in a dauntless and bizarre way, successfully challenging the rom-com genre and holding up a mirror up to modern dating that still resonates today.
Love Me If You Dare follows a boy named Julien (Guillaume Canet) and a girl named Sophie (Marion Cotillard). They meet in elementary school as Sophie gets bullied for being Polish while Julien’s mother is dying of cancer. With the shared trauma that needs diversion, little Julien and Sophie created a game that is meant to be played for a lifetime: whoever is in possession of a carousel-like tin box has to act-out a dare.
The duo takes the audience through a whirlwind of emotions, drawing a few laughs that will eventually lead to annoyance as their challenges for each other stray from the amusing to the dishonourable: from trashing a wedding, to urinating on the principal’s floor, to slapping a random man in the gym.
The outrageous pranks Julien and Sophie pull on each other never seem to meet their end. If they had stayed kids, maybe their actions would be easier to justify. But as adults pulling such foolish pranks, the ethics become debatable.
Love Me If You Dare, with its vibrant cinematography, evinces a moral questioning of the characters’ motivations. The magical realism that is well laid-out in the story provides a thin-line between real-life and fantasy. Why does Sophie act the way she does? Is it because she was bullied as a kid? And as for Julien, is it because he gets the blame for his mother’s death? The viewers can come up with better reasons for why the characters behave as they do. But in reality, they are just two self-absorbed people who believe they are saving themselves from their respective traumas, redirecting them at each other and at other people who quite literally happen to be in their way.
Julien and Sophie love each other and are clearly meant to be together, but they are too proud to admit it; in between the never-ending, shameless dares, the words “I love you” are dying to be said. Whatever they are up to, it separates them from the rest of the world. In their selfish eyes, what they have is a great, amusing game, and it does not matter if no one else is laughing but them. After all, is love not like acting as if the two of you are the only people in the world?
Whimsical and complicated characters driven by extensive feelings are often spotlighted in French cinema; they challenge the viewers to reflect on their own definition of raw emotions. Amélie (2001) is the other side of the coin to Love Me If You Dare, given that the former sets the tone of basking in the simple pleasures of life and falling in love, while Love Me If You Dare conveys downright shame and obsession—mirroring the harsh reality that people can be cruel and immature, especially when it comes to love.
Modern dating becomes synonymous with being emotionally unavailable and sending out mixed signals. People these days would rather tear themselves out than tell someone they have feelings for them because vulnerability is considered a weakness today; whoever falls in love first is the delicate one.
Julien and Sophie give each other all the embarrassment, conveying the message that sometimes love comes with humiliation. It is a mortifying deal between lovers to express their loyalty to each other—the lifetime devotion people seek in relationships. But Love Me If You Dare shows that faithfulness comes at a heavy price, especially if not properly utilised.
In modern times, people can be as demanding as Julien and Sophie, maybe not to the same extent, but perhaps in commanding our partners to send us a text as often as they can or asking them to block a particular person just because our insecurity is flaring. Like in the movie, all this demand sometimes leads to hurt between real-life couples, or worse, hurt for those around them.
At the end, Love Me If You Dare presents us with two possible resolutions. With its excellent camera tricks, the two endings provide the message that life is a combination of people’s choices and that everyone is always presented with two different paths.
For Julien and Sophie, will the conclusion boil-down to how far their pact will go for them to prove their loyalty to their eccentric game? Or will they realize that their love is the only winner in the dares?
Love Me If You Dare excels in offering an insightful, inventive twist on the conventions of the rom-com genre, irritating the audience yet simultaneously making them introspect. The film invites the audience to confront their approaches to love, especially the ones that are difficult to admit and face up to; sometimes no one can win the game of love but our egocentric hearts. Themes that still resonate in the landscape of love and relationships today, we can often feel ourselves to be the ‘main characters’ in our life stories, but we can also be the villains.
Words by Jessica Ann Evangelista