Julien isn't like most French children. Instead of aspiring to be a vintner or an armistice negotiator, little Julien dreams of being a tyrant, complete with a harem and once-a-week torture confabs.

Not your textbook romantic hero, but then, Yann Samuell's “Love Me If You Dare” is no textbook romance. Starring two enormously appealing actors in two very unusual roles, this jauntily sadistic love story performs a flanking maneuver on the romantic ideal and hacks away until the poor sucker is bloodied but strangely purified.

To be sure, Julien (played as a child by Thibault Verhaeghe) is a holy terror. Impulsive and prank-prone, the child finds a partner in crime in Sophie (Josephine Lebas Joly), a Polish classmate hardened by the racial resentment of her peers.

Using a candy tin as a game marker, the two launch a tradition of daring one another to perform pranks and other mischievous acts.
Their game becomes a form of escapism: For Julien, escape from his mother's terminal cancer; for Sophie, escape from poverty and isolation.

Ten years later, Julien (Guillaume Canet from “The Beach”) and Sophie (Marion Cotillard from “Big Fish”) are still at it, but their game — like the cancer that killed Julien's mother — has metastasized into something toxic.
Incapable of honestly confessing their love for one another, the two make their dares increasingly reckless and mean-spirited.
After a four-year hiatus, Julien feigns a marriage proposal to Sophie, only to swiftly introduce her to his real fiancée. Later, she thinks up something just as ingeniously warped.

Admittedly, it's difficult to like these characters, at least initially. Every time we see them, they're tap-dancing on car hoods or obliviously standing in the middle of traffic, lost to the world. However, as their abnormal psychology comes more clearly into focus, and as they prod each other closer to oblivion, they become more vulnerable, funny and tragically irresistible.

They're like a pair of surfers who refuse to ride anything but the crest of the wave; thus, they keep one another locked in a perpetual state of anticipation and disappointment. So demented. So very French.

First-time director Samuell’s florid, fantastical imagery speaks of one too many “Amelie” viewings, but he’s an exciting new talent who obviously knows his way around a romantic paradox. With this saga of abnormal romance, he reminds us that love is always a game, until we stop playing it.