Jeux d'enfants

Plot synopsis:
The film begins in Liège in Belgium, where a little girl, Sophie, is being bullied by other children. Only a bus driver and a boy, Julien, help her collect her books that the others have thrown into a puddle.
To cheer Sophie up, Julien gives her a small tin box, a gift from his fatally ill mother. Because it is important to him, he asks her to lend it back to him from time to time. As Julien wants the box back at the moment he gave it to her, Sophie demands proof of how important it is to him. Julien disengages the handbrake of the bus without hesitation, and the bus full of children rolls down a hill. Their game has begun: the box changes its owner after each completed dare.
Between the son of wealthy Belgian parents and the daughter of poor Polish immigrants a lasting friendship develops. As children, they misbehave in school, wreak havoc on a wedding, and request silly tasks of each other. As teenagers their romantic relationships with others suffer as a result of their dares. Meanwhile, the two friends ignore any consequences or punishment during their game.
While they are always looking for the next kick, a love is slowly evolving between the protagonists. Not wanting to admit it, they divert their attention from it by even more extreme dares.
As young adults, Julien tells Sophie that he wants to get married, only later revealing that he means to someone else. The climax is reached when Sophie interrupts Julien's wedding, after which he is cast out by his father and Sophie is nearly killed during another game. Julien returns to marry his wife, and Sophie declares that they will not see each other for ten years.
Ten years pass, and Julien is married with two children. Sophie has also married her husband, a famous soccer star. A successful Julien admits that he has not forgotten Sophie, though he assumes that she has forgotten him. On the night of Julien's tenth wedding anniversary, Sophie sends a message to him, indicating that the game is back on. Julien and Sophie meet for a brief moment in the midst of another dare, yet it is enough to remind Julien that their game is "better than life itself." After a dramatic accident, Julien and Sophie finally reunite, despite the protestations of their spouses.
The film has two alternate endings, which are shown consecutively. In the first, Julien and Sophie decide as an ultimate dare to finally share their dream together, their "dream of an eternal love" – the pair embrace while they stand in a construction pit that is about to be filled with concrete. The couple kiss as they are pulled beneath the cement, and both drown in the sludge. The other ending has the now aged Julien and Sophie spending time together in a garden and carrying on playing their game with milder dares. However, the opening scene of the film (an overhead view of a building site and a pit filled with concrete in which the upper side Julien's tin box rests partially sunk) replays, suggesting that the two friends actually did bury themselves and drown beneath the concrete.

Tags: comedy, humor, dark, romantic, prank

Review:
The movie does not ask you to take it seriously, but simply to watch as Julien and Sophie play with the elements of conventional life.
This bittersweet comedy about love is in line with great recent French movies such as Amelie or L'Auberge Espagnole, But Jeux d'Enfants is not trying to copy any of the previous.
In fact, it is one of the most original movies I've seen lately.Directed in a superb way by the inventive Yann Samuell, this film can make you laugh out loud in a minute and shed some tears on the next due to the extreme complexity of the feelings the director and the actors share with you.
Nothing in this film seems exaggerated; it's a fairy tale of our time with a great dose of realism.The chemistry between Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard is simply perfect.Whether you like it or not, it's difficult to be indifferent to this movie and this is one of the best compliments a director can receive..
But this film continually had me reeling when trying to get a grip on it and, in the end, just when I thought it was a predictable love story...!!
We usually expect to finish watching a film and have no questions - to have everything wrapped up nice and neatly so we can get on with our lives.If you do not want to suddenly find yourself asking "Pour quoi?" a week later or waking up with the haunting refrains of the unique renditions of the Piaf song in your head, then I would suggest you rent a more predictable movie.However, if you like being alternately surprised, delighted and haunted by a unique film and wonderful soundtrack - check this one out..
Which is not to say that realism is necessarily less manipulative than expressionism, both aim to effect their viewing audience, expressionism is just less constrained.When you are used to a steady diet of Hollywood realism, it is difficult to switch gears and watch a film like "Jeux d'enfants" without attempting to force it into the realism mold.
So it is with Julien and Sophie, the central characters of this film, who in childhood become fast friends because of a game they share (or visa versa) which involves one challenging the other to do something outrageous while passing a gayly decorated candy canister to them.
Right away this film starts off in a dream like state, giving us the sense that we're really watching a school play put on by 4th graders.
It's funny how when it comes to french movies, french people are just so harsh (i'm refering to previous comments about this movie and others)!This one starts really (i mean really) good and, it's true, goes through worse scenes ...
I love romantic crap like this normally, especially offbeat stuff -- but the characters never seem to grow up, they remain children playing children's games.
The fact that these outsiders disappear conveniently when they are not needed in the story shows how shallow the storytelling truly is.Admittedly, a movie I like very much, SHE'S SO LOVELY, features a similar storyline where childish people are separated by time and when they come back together, they throw away everything that has happened in the intervening years just to be together again.
But to the more mature audience, this is downright appalling.The premise is that two kids grow up playing a mean-spirited game in which they constantly dare each other to do cruel things to innocent bystanders.
It's not a conventional movie, but if you can appreciate a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour, and the idea that love is just a game that adults play, then I'd highly recommend it.
based on a different game the two main characters play, the story tells about how a life-time love can be understood and what can be done to achieve it.
one can argue that this is one of the most different kind of love that has been told in cinema.from the beginning till the end of the film, the emotional worlds of both main characters are well explained with good connections.although there can be some disappointments about certain parts of the film, the song "la vie en rose" goes wonderful with the story and creates a good reason to like the film..
Sophie is abused because of her heritage/race (in French films this is allowed to be a background detail, in an American film they only mention it if that's what the movie's about in the first place, and even then they feel compelled to include a moral lesson about it {basically in order to deny that it is a facet of everyday life}).
The dialogs are pretty bad, some of the worst I have ever heard, Guillaume Canet is not convincing (I have almost never found him very convincing), his father in the movie plays very badly, the story is dumb, the ending is...
stupid.I think I have not dislike a movie so much since "le pacte des loups" (brotherhood of the wolf) from Christophe Gans (and I watch / see about 80-100 movies a year), but at least that movie had some action and lots of good actors.I had never commented here (only rated), and when I saw the rating and the comments, I thought I had to write something down.I guess we won't have problems to sell the DVD we were offered : not such a bad movie in our (large) collection !!!I am open minded (I watch SF, westerns, drama, comedies, silents, horror, fantasy...
If the daring game makes sense, I really don't believe in the love story & what could have been a romantic JULES & JIM feeling in the script turns into a pretty anti-climactic ending.
in the end, you're just checking your backpack in case you didn't leave your flame-thrower home.To sum things up, this movie is obviously a product generated to aim at AMELIE's audience BUT it doesn't have it's good storytelling or visual charm.
Do not waste money on this, there are much better french movies being exported, much better ones to get on DVD too [including real tasty romantic love stories]..
The direction of the film can be characterised as "cute"...but i am becoming less tolerant with films that just try to be "different" from typical Hollywood flicks, with the use of a few pretentious scenes ("oh..the typical Box Office Hit viewer could have NEVER understood that one!!")...and directorial tricks.I do like to think that there are still sincere film-making attempts in THIS century, whether its in Europe or elsewhere..."Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things"..
" i will probably tell you to forget about this movie , but if just for a second , you forget all the common sense you have and can follow the Passion that moves the characters , you will get the game and the way they play it.
But where the Hollywood movies pretty much only involve hurt feelings solved with a heartfelt apology, debut writer/director Yann Samuell has his characters play for deeper stakes that bitterly cut to the psychological core of each damaged partner.
If you like good romances, not the usual romantic comedies, but different, brand new romances, this movie is great.
The lead characters (Sophie and Julien) pulled me up to the sky and showed me how love really feels like.This is the worst dare one could do, and the best story one could watch.
One of the greatest movies i have seen in a long time the characters show a real connection you can actually feel the sexual tension between them, and the emotions they are going through.
This is one of those films you'll either love or hate...Julien & Sophie meet as children; each coming from a depressing, tragic home...their bond is an escape from 'real life' & an obsession over a game of dares where they attempt to one-up each other...at first the dares were just naughty & funny...but as Julien & Sophie got older, their dares turned darker & more destructive...The question is...is this obsession fueled by love?
or are they just extremely foolish?...I really enjoyed this film; its not that i like seeing people suffer...but its a great study of how two people -- who are obviously so right for each other -- are more obsessed with besting one another instead of being honest...Overall: This film is AMELIE meets FIGHT CLUB...this is definitely NOT a chic-flick...its a romantic/comedy where the guys might find more enjoyable than their girlfriends....
You feel the romance since the first scene but you don't get there is a love story going on until the half of the movie.
If you want a ride that pulls at and shakes up your heart, your rationality, and your outlook of the world and of life and of love, I definitely recommend this movie to you.
The wonderful performance of these two actors is remarkable due to the fact that they act such naturally!!I was very surprised that these 2 actors that are not two very important names in Hollywood performed such well in the movie.I just loved the theme of the film.I do not consider myself a romantic person,but the story had impressed me a lot.With regards, g.v..
Probably Samuell, who at 39 arguably has a modern anti-romantic view of love, chose Armstrong deliberately to puncture and romance before it got off the ground in the same way that Brecht would interrupt a serious play just as the audience was being drawn in and throw in a vaudeville act to remind us that we were in a theatre watching a play.
I think I won't watch a French movie for a long time.It was just a wast of time for me.To the people who cares these reviews you don't miss anything,it was a total torture to be patient till the end of the movie that I did it myself in 39 years of my life What is more boring than a French movie?
This is a love story with an edge and will remain with you long after any Meg or Julia flick.I'm not quite sure whether Samuell's made a film about how passionately romantic two people can be or whether this is a thinly veiled anti-romantic movie masquerading as a love story.The cornerstone of romantic films is that both lovers are immensely likable characters.
Not only is it daring to employ such an unconventional and twisted denouement, but the ending also is open to interpretation - two people seeing the same film could easily differ on what it all means.
It has all the makings of a great love story, maybe I'm just a sucker for romantic movies (and i really am) but this is one of the best i've seen so far.
I think the french can make great movies and save a lot of money in the process, watching one of their movies is like being in the mind of the director, you can even be sometimes surprised of the developments, in the last 10 American movies i saw i could tell you exactly who is going to be arrested, who will day...
But not all of them are fulfilled in their respective lives.We recommend this movie for people who love romantic comedies.
The actors who are Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard make the story even more realistic because of their real life as a couple.This film touch your heart and leaves room for our child's imagination regarding the end of the film.
i always feel french make the best movies on love.
acting is perfect and yes the script is without reason so don't expect anything else than madness.the last scene won me over and yes the story does not have the most logical , make everybody happy ending but sometimes its better that way.
Only french guys are capable of developing such beautiful surrealistic screenplays ( a la 'Amelie') which the Hollywood movie makers would never like to step on.The director influences our emotions so easily that we get hypnotized by the narration .
I think we can better understand the real essence of the characters if we start watching the film from the end to the beginning, if we realize the intense feelings they have for each other, the reasons they do what they do, the whole idea of the game they play even in the final moment.
A different kind of love story.I didn't really like the fact that a voice was explaining the whole movie but it helped to inform the watcher of history and such so I didn't mind to much.
Anyway,I voted 9 because I found the scenario really original and interesting..also congratulations to the director of photography!Everything in the film has perfectly chosen,especially the two little children..and the music..(La Vie En Rose)There's nothing much to say:Go and see it!It can change your life if you find something from yourselves like i did....
I first started getting into foreign films when I saw the movie "A Beautiful Life", and then I craved for more.
Then I saw Amelie and was entranced by the way the French film their movies.
His use of color, imaginative storytelling, and mastery behind the camera helped this film go from average love story to a clear representation of human emotion.
The colors that Samuell uses to help heighten the emotion of these two characters and build a very surreal world for us are enjoyable every time I watch this film.
I suggest this film to everyone who is looking for that creative story about love and games.Grade: ***** out of *****.
It excellently blended so many genres of films, from the dark comedic aspect to the romantic love story that most people know the French for.
At first, when i finished watching the movie, i thought that it was a complete waste of time, and this was because i did not like the ending one bit!
The way the movie was done was very similar to Amelie, which was also a very good movie.Throughout the whole movie, the two "lovers" play a game in which who ever has the tin box has to do the other ones dare, and eventually it spins out of control as love gets involved.The ending was not one of my preferred tastes.
The cast for the two main characters are great; however, I think Marion Cotillard carries out as Sophie more beautifully than Guillaume Canet does as Julien.It's a movie that is worth seeing..
Even the young actors who play Sophie & Julien's childhood are brilliant in their performances.The French title, 'Jeux d'Enfants'(meaning - Children's Game) and the English Title, 'Love Me If You Dare' both are quite apt.
The movie's end just stuns you and leaves you humming the song...If you love good cinema, watch it !!
The French Know How to Have Fun. A game of dare between two friends spans across time, taking playfulness to new heights.An original love story that is as refreshing as it is creative, with fun elements of magical realism mixed in.
This film is about two children playing a game of dare for years.
But what they don't dare is to admit their love for each other.This film is beautifully shot, especially the childhood scenes.
It is shocking that how a supposed dare game can be manipulative and destructive, affecting their lives profoundly in many ways.Though this film is not a masterpiece, it is enjoyable and fun to watch..
Jeux d'enfants aka love me if u dare( English version title) is a good movie.
Well for all you romantic people out there who loved Amelie, you should really really see this movie.
Whatever the case, this is a beautiful piece which portrays love lasting throughout time in a thoughtful, igenius way...I was lucky enough to see a screening of this movie at the Toronto International Film Festival and hear the director talk about this piece...and it truly is a piece of cinematic joy.
Until the end of the movie you can not predict what is going to happen unlike the other romance films.
It makes one wonder what if he could change the way he is living and do something really stupid/ different.The movie is marked by good performances from both the lead actors with others having too little a role to play.
This is why the film has been called poor man's Amelie due to its understated,unusual sort of optimism-especially Julien's life would have been worse than death,had he survived-both without the woman he loved and with his childhood dream shattered for good-this is the way many people are slowly dying as human tools of the consumerist world,without daring to break free.
SPOILERS####### The film loved fooling around with cinema and camera tricks but overall, once they became adults - I found the movie so repetitive and eventually boring and I felt sorry for Julian and Sophie and all the people in their life.
Just because the protagonists were like this from childhood to adulthood and performed this kind of shame and outrage on each other as well as all the people they encountered throughout their lives did not make for a romantic movie for me.
This is not a comedic love story in my estimation.After the first 30 minutes, I was ready to quit on this movie, but wanted to keep an open mind and made it to the end.
This reminds me of another dark romantic comedy - "The Secretary".When you watch this film, you must enjoy it in its silliness and just let it take you to the amazing insanity of falling in love.
And after you watch this film, ask yourself: "Is Love a dare I can take?".
They've been playing this game for their entire lives, and this is the way they express their love for each other.