Saved!, Love Me If You Dare

Heavenly creatures: Saved! is more immature prank than serious anti-Christian satire

By Jeannette Catsoulis

The faith-based website Christian-Answers.net has awarded Saved! a "moral rating" of "Extremely Offensive"--which will probably do more to boost this modest comedy's box office than any number of rave reviews. But any believer blessed with even an embryonic sense of humor will discover that Saved! isn't really clever enough to give offense; indeed, its swipes at sanctimony are so broad and basic that they make Monty Python's Life of Brian look positively subtle.

More immature prank than serious satire, Saved! reiterates every high school motif from Mean Girls on down, then places them in a setting of born-again bigotry called American Eagle Christian High School. Jena Malone plays Mary, an addled believer who surrenders her virginity in a futile attempt to "cure" her incipiently gay boyfriend, only to end up a pregnant pariah. To escape the self-righteous condemnation of her peers--led by a grating Mandy Moore as a queen-bee Jesus freak--Mary cleaves to the school's other outsiders: a rebellious Jewish punkette (expertly played by Eva Amurri) and a wheelchair-bound humanist (a surprisingly strong Macaulay Culkin).

While "God Only Knows" bleats on the soundtrack and Mary prays for cancer instead of pregnancy, the strain of maintaining an aura of naughtiness while attacking such obvious caricatures begins to show. Indie veterans Mary-Louise Parker (Angels in America) and Martin Donovan (The United States of Leland)--playing, respectively, Mary's "No.1 Christian Interior Decorator" mom and a painfully hip school principal named Pastor Skip--perform as though uncertain what kind of film they've signed on to: a biting attack on America's condemnatory religious right or a good-hearted social commentary?

Director Brian Dannelly tries, and fails, to have it both ways. A survivor of a Catholic elementary, a Jewish summer camp and a Baptist high school, he can't resist tying everything together with a pretty moral bow. Saved! may begin by lashing out at fundamentalist hypocrisy but ends predictably preaching christian values of its own--with a small C, of course.

Games people play

The literal translation of Love Me If You Dare's French title (Jeux d'enfants) is "Child's Play," which may be a more accurate description of what the movie's central pair of twisted paramours is up to. Though even the most unrelentingly wicked rugrat would be hard-pressed to achieve the astounding level of derangement displayed here.

Julien (Guillaume Canet) and Sophie (Big Fish's Marion Cotillard) first meet as children. Outsiders both--Sophie is Polish, and Julien's mother has cancer--they bond over a game involving a tin merry-go-round: whoever has the toy can dare the other to do something shocking. At first, these tasks range from mildly disgusting (urinating in front of a teacher) to mildly dangerous (releasing the hand brake of a school bus); but as the pair grow older, the game becomes both hazardous and cruel. By the time they reach adulthood, it's clear that Julien and Sophie are completely unable to communicate without the toy. It's also clear that their sick games will ultimately destroy them.

Love Me If You Dare is a chaotic whirl of animation, zoom shots and candy-colored images as dazzling as a fireworks display--and just as lacking in substance. Director Yann Samuell is so busy channeling Amélie he seems oblivious to the movie's nuttiness. Are Sophie and Julien in love? There is no way to tell; but in scenes like the one where he places her, blindfolded, in the path of a speeding train, you may suspect that love isn't the predominant emotion. And as the stakes mounted and disaster loomed, I began to long for the appearance of men in white coats bearing soothing drugs. "Do you know what it's like to live with your speedometer at 210 and never go over 60?" asks Julien in the film's sole stab at psychological assessment. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.