Jeux D’enfants

Director: Yann Samuel

31 December 2022

See

Her: Jeux D’Enfants – a very French comedy starring Marion Cotillard and Guillaume Canet which shook my unprotected 15 year old mentality and set wrong standards for romantic relationship expectations. 

Him: Jeux D’Enfants directed by Yann Samuel, is the story of Julien (Guillaume Canet) and Sophie (Marion Cotillard), best friends since childhood playing a game of one-up-manship involving a merry-go-round box and the belief that the fantastical world they inhabit and the severe rules of the game apply only to them.

Think

Her: Great example of codependent relationship scenario. Feelings aside, Julien and Sophie are egoistic self-centered individuals who regularly abuse and disappoint people around them without taking any responsibility for their actions. Nothing good is going to grow from their companionship, all they can do is to distract, including themselves. 

Him: Samuel’s film feels like the fantastical worlds of childhood wonder created by Jean-Pierre Jenut or Michel Gondry, It’s saturated colours and chaotic action which shifts quickly so the only thing you can invest in is their developing ‘will theft, won’t they’ relationships and the escalating stakes of the game. 

Feel

Her: Despite my thinking reflection and emotionally I sympathise with Sophie and Julien. Unlike the majority of people who never do, they dared all their lives and nothing could stop them except death. They were addicted, but love can be like that, quite often it is. It’s hard to set boundaries without disrupting the fragile magnetic field of love. I know it’s another extreme end of the spectrum and, frankly, my sweet spot is somewhere in between (isn’t everyones?) but daring as an idea feels very appealing. I think Sophie and Juliens only problem was that they didn’t know where to stop. 

Him: Initially irritating as problem children, I came to appreciate they coped that way because Julien’s dying mother made him believe a game was the way for him to soar, like she said she flies. And his compassion for bullied immigrant Sophie paved their concrete coffin with good intentions. They atleast stuck to the rules with which they made their plane of existence believably complex, yet simple. From objecting at a wedding, a decade apart, near death experiences, they continued to play all their lives.