LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES

Reviewed - Love Me if you Dare (Jeux D'enfants): Eugh! What a truly revolting piece of work. The combination of the cloying sweetness of the film's execution and the caustic vileness of its two main characters - I cannot remember another romantic comedy in which the lovers were, excuse my French, such total bastards - gives this film the quality of some weird dish designed to satisfy the cravings of a troubled pregnant woman: anchovies and Angel Delight, Marmite and Pop Tarts.

Mind you, each of those ingredients is fine in itself, whereas, even when analysed in isolation, every aspect of this nasty little film is toxic through and through.

Love Me If You Dare (no thanks) tells the story of a life-long teasing romance between two handsome idiots who, when children, establish a convention whereby one will, after passing on a brightly coloured tin box, dare the other to do something outlandish. The dares begin as childish adventures, but, as the years pass, end up destroying the lives of everybody who steps in the sometime lovers' paths.

The picture is filled with the sort of sickeningly busy folderols - fantasy sequences, speeded-up action, endless lists - that turned many otherwise amenable viewers against Amélie and features the most irritatingly obsessive use of a single piece of music I can remember since, well, ever. Given that the song in question is La Vie en Rose, one must assume that the film-makers are trying to flog some sort of quintessential Gallic whimsy. I'll pass.