Review: Love Me If You Dare

Yann Samuell mainlines into Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie for inspiration but can scarcely muster a contact high.

Photo: Paramount Classics

For his feature film debut, director Yann Samuell huffs on Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie for inspiration but can scarcely muster a contact high. In this candy-coated trifle, two kiddies shunned by their classmates contrive a game of dare mediated by a merry-go-round contraption—and the older they get, the nastier the dares become.

Seemingly trapped in an adolescent fantasy world, Julien (Guillaume Canet) and Sophie (Marion Cotillard) eventually learn that life (and love) isn’t a game. “Discipline is the mother of respect,” says someone to Julien at one point, but it’s a lesson that seemingly evades the film’s director. Though Julien and Sophie’s lifelong game is clearly a form of escapism, Samuell never truly defines what they’re running from or where they’re heading.

Highly unpleasant, the main characters are not unlike soulless brats who get onto an endless theme park ride with no signs of stopping. If the characters in Love Me If You Dare see life as a cheap circus act, one could say that Samuell feels similarly about the filmmaking process. Amélie had its problems, but Jeunet’s film certainly had an original vision. Surprisingly conventional and boring, Love Me If You Dare is a cheap form of flattery.

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Score: 
 Cast: Guillaume Canet, Marion Cotillard, Thibault Verhaeghe, Joséphine Lebas-Joly, Gérard Watkins, Emmanuelle Grönvold, Laëtizia Venezia Tarnowska  Director: Yann Samuell  Screenwriter: Jacky Cukier, Yann Samuell  Distributor: Paramount Classics  Running Time: 94 min  Rating: R  Year: 2003  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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