This film is an interesting combination between child-like innocence and violent cruelty, somewhat like Blur's video for Good Song, screamer-type computer pranks or Happy Tree Friends.This might make the film seem disturbing and chilling at first(I admit this is the way I felt when I first watched it and usually I'm quite difficult to shock), but I guess two or more viewings are necessary to fully understand it,once the surprising factor has worn off because the ending is known and a more critical, careful viewpoint is possible. The story starts like a childhood game-Julien and Sophie were first non-sexual buddies since they both were eight and they were already then linked by strange symbols of their friendship,like an old box which is actually more than a simple object to both of them(it will play an important part in the film,somewhat like Kane's Rosebud)and a game they both invented,starting with the question "cap/pas cap"(approximate translations: are you in or not,want to play or not,game on or not)before every unimportant and crucial decision,turning their entire lives into a game,a bet,a challenge in between doing or not doing several (mostly outrageous)things. Years go by and,like in Wuthering Heights(to which this film is considered to be a contemporary version)their relationship becomes gradually love/hate-sort of one,less because there was a real sexual or sentimental chemistry between them and more because,just like in Wuthering Heights they were close to each other(closer even more than their own parents)and kindred spirits since their childhood. But they gradually have to discover that what was permitted to them as children(though even then their were occasionally bullied by parents and teachers due to their game and other curiosities)becomes increasingly impossible for them as teens or young adults,that real life is not a game but a tough struggle for survival.They try to get together but something has changed,they don't manage to stay together foe long(a series of both objective and subjective factors are causing their separation)and while he seriously considers to flee to Afganistan and become fundamentalist Moslem(he is even,for a very short moment depicted as a sort of Bin Laden-this is one of the reasons why the film is brilliant,arty,so European,because it involves frame-stories,disrupted,alternative plots),she starts an affair with a struggling,unknown and poor football-player,whom she doesn't love. A few years pass and,in spite of their wild,strange personalities they are both involved in a bourgeois,"decent",respectable sorts of lifestyles(yes,sometimes not even the most bohemian can't escape it)-Julien,who dreamed in his childhood of becoming a tyrant,is now married,a father and has a lot of debts to pay years ahead for the house and cars bought for his growing family,Sophie on the other hand has married the football-player who is now an international star like Beckham,rich and famous,yet Sophie doesn't find the slightest satisfaction neither in her marriage nor her new wealth. Both have ended up exactly the opposite of what they once wanted to be and both of them dream(or rather desperately crave)for re-teaming. Julien's monologue as he is driving towards a(probably self-inflicted)accident is summing up his relationship with Sophie-in a crescendo that lasts several minutes,his final sentence before the crash being:better than life(relevant because it's also one of the titles of this film and it perfectly sums up their relationship-which was to both more important than the instinct of self-preservation). Since the accident had only mild consequences they decide that every great gift needs a box,a wrapping and,just as they played with famous old box in their childhood they resolve to be wrapped up together for eternity...in a box of concrete. With a last "cap/pas cap" they both accept("cap!")for a last time to conclude their game while descending into a pit soon to be filled up with concrete-it seems that French cinema usually ends a love story with both characters willingly dying together,see Jules et Jim or Mayerling. This final scene was for me the most disturbing,and probably it is so even to a viewer with macabre/dark tastes and/or least instinct of self-preservation,later on I realized that it was surrealistic,fairly impossible off screen: there are several construction-workers shown while deliberately pouring concrete on them,in real life a worker who would do that would lose his job and be charged with murder. Though at first I was unconsciously appalled(heck,damned instinct named above!),I then realized that the scene was rather symbolical than a true outcome-being also named love me if you dare,this film is a metaphor about the price and rewards of love: in love one must dare to accept every challenge,even death,to eventually find fulfillment. Daring also involves not losing the child-like fantasy beyond any reason at whatever the cost-for instance the characters in The Cement Garden,Twist-and Shout or Zappa(other beautifully deep European films about coming of age)similarly unleash disaster,but without bad intentions,rather an overreacted,yet natural unconsciousness. At a closer look,the ending(with the same old box symbolically crowning the concrete box)might even be considered a victory of unrestrained,innocently unaltered love over petty-bourgeois morality,of fantasy and imagination of the tyranny of real life-after all our definitions of what's right,of the values we're serving,of reason and morality might be wrong. This is why the film has been called poor man's Amelie due to its understated,unusual sort of optimism-especially Julien's life would have been worse than death,had he survived-both without the woman he loved and with his childhood dream shattered for good-this is the way many people are slowly dying as human tools of the consumerist world,without daring to break free. In fact this film might be paralleled also to The Royal Game(a screenplay of Stefan Zweig's brilliant short story where a chess-match becomes an issue far more important some might expect)or to Alexis Zorba or The Old Man and the Sea for its message-like:"what a splendid catastrophe" or "you can kill a man but not defeat him".
