Love Me If You Dare

Yann Samuell wrote and directed this, his first feature. The original title is Jeux d’enfants, children’s games. A French and Belgian co-production, it was shot mostly in Liège in 2002. The opening move sets the scale: to prove what the tin box means to him, Julien releases the handbrake of a school bus full of children. Sophie is picked on at school for being Polish, Julien is the son of well off Belgian parents, and the dares run along that gap. A later round has Sophie stand blindfolded on a railway track, nearly killing her. The music turns on one song. La Vie en Rose is heard in five voices: Édith Piaf’s own recording, Donna Summer, Louis Armstrong, the Brazilian a cappella group Trio Esperança, and Zazie. The film refuses to choose an ending and runs two back to back: in one the couple embrace in a construction pit about to be filled with cement, in the other they are in their eighties in a retirement home, still playing. It premiered at Telluride on 29 August 2003 and sold over 1 million tickets in France. A good fit if you want the damage of the game kept visible and both endings printed. Not for anyone who will not accept the blindfolded wait on the track softened by fairy tale imagery.