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    Love Me If You Dare

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    The 2003 French film Love Me if You Dare follows the relationship between Sophie and Julien from childhood to old age. They invent a game where they take turns daring each other to do risky tasks, with the dares escalating in severity over time and hurting their relationship. The film uses surreal elements and ambiguous storytelling to leave the plot open to interpretation. It also subtly changes the visual style from warm tones in childhood to sharper realism in adulthood. The film provokes questions about how far love should go and moral responsibility through the consequences of the dares, which grow increasingly serious and even lead to a possible ending where Sophie and Julien choose to die together by cementing themselves in a pit

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    Love Me If You Dare

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    lliu_27
    56 views4 pages
    The 2003 French film Love Me if You Dare follows the relationship between Sophie and Julien from childhood to old age. They invent a game where they take turns daring each other to do risky tasks, with the dares escalating in severity over time and hurting their relationship. The film uses surreal elements and ambiguous storytelling to leave the plot open to interpretation. It also subtly changes the visual style from warm tones in childhood to sharper realism in adulthood. The film provokes questions about how far love should go and moral responsibility through the consequences of the dares, which grow increasingly serious and even lead to a possible ending where Sophie and Julien choose to die together by cementing themselves in a pit

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    Film exercise.2

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    The 2003 French film Love Me if You Dare follows the relationship between Sophie and Julien from childhood to old age. They invent a game where they take turns daring each other to do risky tasks, with the dares escalating in severity over time and hurting their relationship. The film uses surreal elements and ambiguous storytelling to leave the plot open to interpretation. It also subtly changes the visual style from warm tones in childhood to sharper realism in adulthood. The film provokes questions about how far love should go and moral responsibility through the consequences of the dares, which grow increasingly serious and even lead to a possible ending where Sophie and Julien choose to die together by cementing themselves in a pit

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    56 views4 pages

    Love Me If You Dare

    Uploaded by

    lliu_27
    The 2003 French film Love Me if You Dare follows the relationship between Sophie and Julien from childhood to old age. They invent a game where they take turns daring each other to do risky tasks, with the dares escalating in severity over time and hurting their relationship. The film uses surreal elements and ambiguous storytelling to leave the plot open to interpretation. It also subtly changes the visual style from warm tones in childhood to sharper realism in adulthood. The film provokes questions about how far love should go and moral responsibility through the consequences of the dares, which grow increasingly serious and even lead to a possible ending where Sophie and Julien choose to die together by cementing themselves in a pit

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    Liu 1

    Chang Liu

    Film Exercise

    A. Volpe

    October 4th, 2010


    Love Me if You Dare

    The 2003 French film, Love Me if You Dare, is a comedic romance that takes place in Belgium

    narrating the relationship between Sophie Kowalsky and Julien Janvier. The French counterpart to its

    title is Jeux D’enfants, which directly translates to “Games of Children.” The plot revolves around a game

    that the two protagonists invent consisting of each taking turns daring the other to complete a task that

    usually results in negative consequences. Once one has completed his or her mission, the other gives

    him or her a special tin candy box which then gives the holder the power to dare the other player. These

    dares range from yelling swear words in class to outright cruel treatment of their lovers. The

    consequences of these tasks increase in significance as the relationship grows. The two become the best

    of friends, and then slowly develop feelings for each other, although neither wants to admit it, which

    results in both being hurt. After much emotional turmoil, the film finishes with a surreal happy ending of

    Sophie and Julien confessing their love for each other and then growing old together.

    Love Me if You Dare has a plot that is made intentionally unclear in certain aspects, thereby

    provoking its audience to question and think for themselves. The film is told from Julien’s viewpoint and

    there are some parts of the movie that are obviously the fantasies of Julien because the characters are

    transformed into cartoons and puppets in an animated world. The large spectrum of realism makes the

    viewer wonder at some parts of the story which could have actually happened in the plot or could have

    been the product of Julien’s imagination. The ending is the best example of this. At that point, Sophie is

    the wife of a professional soccer star and Julien is married with two children. At the final confrontational

    scene, Sophie and Julien confess their love for each other in the pouring rain, but not before Sophie’s
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    husband knocks Julien out with a punch. Julien is expected to fall over on the wet ground, but instead,

    he is shown falling into a deep pool or ocean of water. The next minute is split between realistic flashes

    of Sophie attempting to resurrect Julien and dreamy flashes of Julien buried unconscious in a blue-grey

    expanse of water. Later on, the two participate in “The Dare of Dares,” which is when they both wait for

    their death together in a pit while it is being filled with cement. This scene is tied with the opening scene

    where the special candy box is found to be half buried in the cemented ground. After the two are

    completely covered in cement, an alternative ending is shown where Sophie and Julien are living

    together as an old couple and still playing their game of dares. The different ways that the plot can be

    taken leaves the film open to interpretation. The audience can believe what they like, which makes the

    movie more personal.

    The visual style of Love Me if You Dare moves the audience subconsciously. In the first half of

    the film, when Sophie and Julien were young, the screen portrays their world as slightly fuzzy and

    nostalgic, with warmer tones and highlighting. As the movie progresses into the two’s teenage and

    eventually their adulthood years, the imagery becomes sharper, and the colors more realistic. In the

    final scenes of the two living happily in their old age, their world is again fuzzy, with a strong sepia tint.

    These subtle variations have the power to change how the audience perceives each scene. The warm

    and fuzzy tones transform the mood into more nostalgic and sweet while the crisper lines show more

    realistic adulthood life. Unless the viewer is observant or if he or she is specifically looking for the

    changes in visual representation, it would be difficult for him or her to catch the differences in imagery

    the first time viewing the film.

    The imprudence and total disregard for consequences that Sophie and Julien display has the

    potential to stir questions about how far romantic love should go and where moral responsibility lies in

    relation to that love. With each dare, the repercussions for their actions grow more serious. Julien’s dare
    Liu 3

    for Sophie in high school prevented her from passing her exams. Sophie’s dare for Julien at his wedding

    caused him to lose his engagement with his fiancée and also for his father to break off all ties with him.

    Julien’s final dare for Sophie involved tricking her to believe that he was seriously hurt in an accident

    because of her, which drove her into a break down. This game seems to be ironic in that it pulls them

    together with love but also pushes a substantial amount of pain into each of their lives. In some cases,

    however, the indifference towards consequences is evidence that Julien and Sophie don’t have a care in

    the world for anyone or anything in the world but each other. In one of the possible endings that the

    film portrays, the two lovers choose to die together because they dared each other to. This scene is in

    some ways the romanticist’s perfect ending because they consummate their game ultimately in their

    death, which they share together. This unnecessary death can remind the audience of how irrational

    love can be and how it can motivate us to be careless.

    Love Me if You Dare is a provocative movie about how a game causes two people to do the

    unthinkable. Its imagery has the ability to change the audience’s perception of the different parts of the

    film. The surrealism found in many of its scenes and the different endings give viewers freedom to

    believe what they want and interpret the meanings behind the story as they choose.

    [971 words]
    Liu 4

    Works Cited

    Love Me if You Dare. Dir. Yann Samuell. Perf. Guillaume Canet, Marion Cotillard. Paramount Classics,

    2003. DVD.

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