Love Me If You Dare

The tale starts, as many fairy tales do with two unhappy children. Julien is endlessly energetic and precociously brilliant, but unable to bear the impending heartbreak of the beloved mother's death. Sophie is wildly imaginative, mischeavious and determined to be different, yet in search of someone to accept and love her. When they meet on another, everything changes. They begin what seems to be a child's momentary amusement. Every time they exchange a symbolic tin box (a gift to Julien from his mother), the one who takes the toy also has to take a dare. The pranks they force one another to play range from talking dirty in class to crashing a wedding buffet - cake included - but each one becomes a little bigger, a little more irreverent, a little riskier than the last.

Soon, the game has become something far larger and more thrilling than the sad and disappointing world around them. Despite the constant trouble they get into, Julien and Sophie cannot stop the game's mad, wild and often destructive rush. When Julien's mother passes away, leaving him bereft, the game is the only thing that continues to matter.

Even when they go off to college, the game continues, profressing into more difficult, bizarre and often crueler challenges, each and every new dare seemingly a way for Julien and Sophie to drive one another further away, to avoid admitting they are crazily in love with one another. The harder they compete with one another, the less they are able to communicate their emotions.

When they finally reach adulthood = Julien growing more serious, Sophie even more of a libertine - the uncompromising, child-like nature of the game comes into question. Now Julien and Sophie must choose between the game and their careers, between the game and their spouses-to-be, between the game and the conventions of everyday life. Yet...how can they resist? Just when they think it's all over and life has become banal, the game is afoot again, and they realize they want it to go on and on, without end. It might have taken them a lifetime to say "I love you" but Julien and Sophie manage in their own inimitable style to capture the moment forever...or do they?

Movie Details

Cast: Guillaume Canet, Marion Cotillard, Thibault Verhaeghe, Josephine Lebas-Joly, Emmanuelle Grönvold, Gérard Watkins, Gilles Lellouche, Julia Faure, Laëtizia Venezia Tarnowska, Nathalie Nattier, Robert Willar, Frédéric Geerts, Manuela Sanchez, Philippe Drecq
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 95
DVD Aspect Ratios: 1.85:1

International rating:

Europe: 15
Japan: PG
Australia: M

DVD International release dates:
Europe: Feb 7, 05