The setting of Bonjour Tristesse is so enticing — a Mediterranean town in the South of France, where a large villa looks out toward the sea — that it instantly draws you into this adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s classic novel. The first film by writer-director Durga Chew-Bose, its story of adolescent longing, jealousy and sexual awakening, updated here to the present, is always glorious to look at — from the brightly colored floor tiles to the glittering water. But once you’re inside, its emotional trajectory is curiously flat, even though the cast includes two usually vibrant actors, Claes Bang and Chloë Sevigny.
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The plot is essentially the same one that made Sagan a sensation when the book was published in 1954. The author was just 18, the age of the film’s central character, Cecile (Lily McInerny), whose point of view we largely share. She is on vacation with her father, Raymond (Bang), and his latest young girlfriend, Elsa (Nailia Harzoune), who like the others is sure to be replaced soon. Sevigny plays an old family friend, the stylish but proper fashion designer Anne, who comes to join them. When Anne and Raymond abruptly become engaged, Cecile plots to break them up and keep her life as it is.
Bonjour Tristesse
Cecile’s mother died years before and she and Raymond are especially close, although not suspiciously so. Chew-Bose makes a smart choice by starting the movie with Cecile and her new love, a neighbor near her age named Cyril (Aliocha Schneider). Whatever Cecile’s daddy issues are, she is not simply obsessed with her father; one night she surprises Cyril by quietly sneaking into his bed.
But she has been a sophisticated observer of Raymond’s womanizing. Part of the new version’s problem is that the sexual freedom that seemed shocking seven decades ago no longer does, for either father or daughter. The most outlandish behavior here is that everyone smokes and the adults even light Cecile’s cigarettes for her. Chew-Bose’s screenplay doesn’t explore the characters deeply enough to replace the book’s jaw-dropping quality with any psychological depth.
Maximilian Pittner’s cinematography is sparkling throughout, and Bonjour Tristesse moves fluidly along. But the performances seem stiff, and not in an intentionally stylized way. We know that Bang (The Square and Apple TV+’s Bad Sisters) can be seductive and charming even when playing a villain. Raymond should be an intriguing cad, but he is strangely lifeless. McInerny (Hulu’s Tell Me Lies and Palm Trees and Power Lines) makes Cecile’s jealousy and confusion visceral, but the screenplay doesn’t give her a lot more to do than lounge in the sun and go through the motions of trying to break up the engagement by enlisting Elsa to lure Raymond away from Anne.
Sevigny does much better in her role, partly because Anne is already so tightly wound. She wears her hair up in a severe twist, has a prim bearing and tries to get Cecile to study for her college entrance tests. The actress has one amazing scene when the camera, close on her face, captures a look of pure, eye-opening pain as she recognizes how faithless Raymond can be. But too often these characters merely announce their feelings.
Chew-Bose has written about cinema and published a collection of essays, Too Much and Not in the Mood (2017). Her screenplay is thoughtful enough to try to enhance the motivation behind Raymond and Anne’s unlikely decision. She and Raymond’s late wife had been close friends, and it’s suggested that Anne and Raymond may have more history than anyone else knows. But all that zooms by. It’s true that from her limited perspective, Cecile can’t understand what’s happening any better than we can. But that doesn’t offset the movie’s overall shallowness.
Cecile’s plotting leads to the tragic consequences that end the book and introduce her to real sadness. Chew-Bose makes the daring choice to extend the story beyond the novel and it gives her one of the film’s best episodes, chilling in its revelation of the emotional fallout of Cecile’s actions. More of that boldness might have made Bonjour Tristesse something beyond just a pretty picture.
