This is a still from Jeux D'enfant (the French title which literally translates to "Child's Play"... not to be confused with the Chucky horror franchise) or Love Me If You Dare (2003), possibly one of my favorite movies of all time. I watch it every so often like I read a favorite poem in which the meaning always transforms for me upon each viewing/witness/experience, the stirring of new feelings and attitudes toward "being," of being in this life, the alternative consciousness outside the screen.
Jeux D'enfant's story revolves around Julien and Sophie. Julien, an over-imaginative boy, lives with a cold father and a dying but loving mother who gives him the tin carousel which becomes the central object of exchange throughout the film. He meets Sophie, a Polish girl from a lower working class family, who becomes the victim of much bullying and xenophobia from her classmates. In an attempt to comfort her after they dumped the contents of her book bag into the street, Julien offers her his tin carousel with the promise that she'll lend it to him every once in a while. Sophie challenges him to fulfill a dare in order to get the tin carousel back to which he complies--by releasing the brake on their school bus, sending the bus driver chasing frantically after the bus of screaming kids. From then on until their adulthood, Julien and Sophie continue this game of dare, each dare becoming increasingly more destructive as they realize they are falling in love with each other against the objections of their opposing circumstances.
Most apparent is Julien's father instant hatred for Sophie whose introduction into his son's life has steered him far from the responsible, "citizen", law-abiding life that he had planned for his son. Sophie's entry into his life, as Julien narrates, is comparable to Adam and Eve biting the apple, to defying human capabilities of bodily flight, to transcendence from the boring life of adulthood. She dramatically disrupts the life Julien's father had established for his son. In this sense, Julien's father represents the quintessential "adult"--this man whose life is dictated by formalities, void of all humor, and incapable of openly expressing his feelings except in times of anger or chastisement. He embodies the very elements which Julien and Sophie's game of dare and dare back negate--an obvious threat to Julien's father's notions of order.
Beyond the order of familial expectations, other established institutions are similarly threatened. There's the expectation that Julien enter university, earn a technical degree which allows him to perform in a profession that requires precision, planning and responsibility (urban planning). In contrast, Sophie's time at university is brief, absent of the expectation to pursue a professional career. She points to the irony of Julien's studies in one exchange, reminding him that she's the expert in public housing considering she has lived in one all her life. The friction of their contrasting lifestyles becomes ever more apparent as they get older. The very situations which they once dealt with through games and play in childhood becomes contextualized into class, nation and ethnic terms in adulthood. It becomes increasing clear as they grow older that when they are together, their defiance of societal norms threaten the institutional order: of family, education, marriage, employment--all the stages of life which every citizen is expected to undergo regardless of opportunity, distribution of resources, structural inequalities, etc.
Visually, the earlier scenes of childhood in highly saturated greens and reds is very reminiscent of quirky indie film, Amelie (which I also love). A range of "La Vie en Rose" covers from the original to Louis Armstrong's gravelly baritone neatly partition each development in their relationship. The dialogue is sharp because the chemistry between the two leads is very powerful (for the love of Marion Cotillard!) But what I love most is that these are two characters you love but also hate.
A friend of mine was coerced into watching this with me recently for the first time, and when asked what she thought, she got very quiet, and said, "I...don't really know... I think the story is cute but... it's also very horrible what they do to each other and the people around them". I thought about this statement for a while because it never occurred to me how their relationship could be construed as destructive. I've always thought the world was destructive to their relationship.
It's not as if their childhood was absent of the problems that later plagued them in adulthood. The intentional portrayal of Sophie's early experiences with xenophobic bullies and the gradual fractures in Julien's relationship with his father after his beloved mother's passing prevents the viewer from romanticizing a childhood innocence. Rather, what keeps them alive (as opposed to merely just living) is the sustenance of imagination from childhood and the fight to retain it in adulthood. In a world where confusing orders and accepted behaviors (and the film does a nice job of poking fun at all of these) confine them to the places society has already predetermined for them, their love is (literally) composed of collisions, interruptions and "trouble".
Why this matters: I dislike unconventionally conventional romances (e.g. Natalie Portman and Zach whatshisface of Garden State or 500 Days of Summer's Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanal (sp?) pairing). Forgive your tortured spirit, would you like a cup of strong coffee, Edgar Allan Poe and a side of quirky, complex and conveniently beautiful girl on the side? She comes in just in time to remedy your sad, regressive boy in awkward man's body suit life with startling one-liners that are just-so-darn-cute you just might take her to accompany your shady, grave-stealing friend to a bizarre giant crater and scream out into the rain because that's what deep, tortured people do and also by the way we need a dramatic promo shot for the trailer so crazy people screaming at the rain should do, right?
Anyway, Jeux D'enfant is pretty iconic of my attitude towards romance in that the idea of being with someone, of intimacy, is destructive no matter how you look at it, intentional or not. Particularly if your idea of intimacy defies conventional norms of "being" together (i.e. being queer). Especially amongst the queer dating pool, the societal set up of what is appropriate in being with someone can't help but severely fuck up how even two people resisting these compulsions can happily be in a relationship together. As a radical queer woman of color, I've witnessed painful trespasses in intimate experiences which have dramatically informed my ability to be, but mostly not be with others, and this is similar for a lot of other radical queer folks of color that I know. Each individual comes burdened with histories of violence. There is always that worry that in being together, the violence becomes reiterated in that space. It's like the Don Marquis poem about the moth and the light--that the possibility of being together is beautiful from a near distance, that the majority of the beauty knowingly comes from not being able to touch it without dying, and then there is the actual touching in which the moth incinerates.
But this is also where a lot of our art comes from. There is an inner compulsion to analyze and process, to seek out community that supports this process. If there is anything we have agency over, it is our power to imagine. To develop new ways of dissecting and making sense of a world which has always been dissected and made sense of for us although we always knew somehow that it never did.
I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone, but it speaks volumes to how I feel about writing. Julien and Sophie have their game of dares which they are constantly told to retire in their adulthood. I was never supposed to continue to enjoy writing beyond elementary comprehension of the English language, its phonics and grammatical structures. It had no value for anyone in my family until there was a monetary value attached to it through payment, reward, or grants. It is still, as Trinh T. Minh-ha writes, accompanied by guilt, perpetuated by this nagging feeling that this is something one can't possibly emotionally invest in, that the whole notion of writing as a form of living is self-indulgent in comparison to the so-called other calls of duty which have more value in their output. Writing becomes relegated to the level of hobby, leisure--it has no place in the clocked in hours of mechanical toil. At worst, you will be tolerated: "Well, if this is what you like to do..." But this is rock, it is constant. Writing is simultaneous joy and heartbreak, failure and accomplishment. I have never owned anything like this before, nor will I ever need anything else. In times when intimacy is as dangerous as all suppose, writing keeps us alive.
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