Love Me if you Dare review

 Number 535 on the top 1000 films of all time is the French romantic-comedy Jeux D'enfants or Love me if you Dare.

Eight year old Julien Janvier's (Thibault Verhaeghe) mother is dying of cancer. He finds solace in his neighbour Sophie Kawalsky (Josephine Lebas-Joly) a girl bullied because of her Polish heritage. The two of them fall in love over a series of dares they ask each other to do. These dares continue into adulthood and threaten to rip their lives apart. Guillame Canet plays the adult Julien and Marion Cotillard the adult Sophie.

This film had the artistic style of a Wes Anderson film a la Moonrise Kingdom but it had none of the heart. It had a unique colour palate and quirky cinematography but really annoying characters.

I didn'[t like either Julien or Sophie, either apart or together. As this is a rom-com, I'm expected to root for the two to get together, but I found no reason to do this. This was down to the central story of them playing childish pranks on each other. These start out as harmless, but turn into cruel especially when they affect innocent bystanders.

One prank sees them bully a classmate, another sees the destruction of Julien's wedding and humiliation of his would-be bride. It was reminiscent of Youtube pranksters causing trouble and then going "it's just a prank bro."

I also didn't understand what was keeping Julien and Sophie apart. Why couldn't they be together? They both liked each other - the actors had both on and off-screen chemistry evidenced by how they later went onto have a long-term relationship. Julien's dad never liked Sophie and thinks she is a bad influence on his son, yet he doesn't do much to stop them from being together.

Finally, can we talk about that ending? Spoilers

As the ultimate dare to prove their love to each other, Julien and Sophie voluntarily decide to be encased together in a block of concrete. Yes, you read that correctly. They chose to be buried alive in concrete. How was this romantic? This is something you would see in a horror movie. Not a romance.

I really didn't like Love me if you Dare. Tonally it was all wrong. And it was all style over substance.

A Very Long Engagement review

 Number 533 on the top 1000 films of all time is the French romantic war-drama: Un Long Dimanche de Fiancailles or A very Long Engagement.

The film begins in the trenches of WW1 where the dreadful conditions lead to five French soldiers perform self-mutilation to escape the front lines. Instead they are all released into No Man's Land to die. However, Mathilde Donnay (Audrey Tatou) the fiancee of the convicted soldier Manech Langonnet (Gaspard Ulliel) is convinced that her beau survived the war. She resolves to find him partially assisted by Tina Lombardi (Marion Cotillard) lover of another of the convicted soldiers.

A Very Long Engagement was released in 2004 only three years after Audrey Tatou received international recognition in the romantic-comedy Amelie. She easily took to the more dramatic role of Mathilde with ease. She played a woman determined to find her fiance at any cost. Tatou was rightly nominated for a Best Actress Cesar award.

However, I think it was Marion Cotillard who stole the show in her supporting role of Tina Lombardi. To avenge her lover's death, she resolves to all the people responsible for his murder. She layer lays her soul bare to Mathilde in a scene that must have bagged her the Best Supporting Actress Cesar. It's no surprise that only three years later, she won an Oscar for playing Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose.

Speaking of Oscars, I was surprised to learn that A Very Long Engagement wasn't nominated for the Best International Film Oscar. Although it was in the running, the lesser film the Chorus was chosen as the French nomination instead. Although this went onto to lose to The Sea Inside.

However, the Academy did recognise A Very long Engagement for its art direction and cinematography. Much of the film was cast in a hopeful, sunshine hue while the cinematography could match any world-war epic. The war sequences were difficult to watch.

A Very Long Engagement was a great film which received a well-earned host of awards, most notably, a Cesar for Marion Cotillard.