Chew-Bose’s feature debut casts a modern glow on Sagan’s classic story of privilege, grief and girlhood.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Based upon the same 1954 novel by Francoise Sagan as the 1958 Otto Preminger film starring his muse (and Joan of Arc) Jean Seberg, shortly before Seberg become an international star in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 New Wave classic “Breathless,” this new “Bonjour Tristesse” from writer-director Durga Chew-Bose, making her feature film debut, is an impressive achievement. Set in the same South of France idyllic resort, where the young, feckless, gamine heroine Cecile (American Lily McInerny) spends her days in wet swim suits on a rocky beach with her hunky boyfriend or eating or napping on the terrace of her father’s beautiful beach house, this “Bonjour Tristesse” takes place today, although there are enough mid-century touches to remind us of the original film’s (and novel’s) setting.
While Cecile and her squeeze Cyril (Paris-born Aliocha Schneider) sail around the rocks, her tall, handsome and self-involved father Raymond (a cosmopolitan Claes Bang in a role played by David Niven) enjoys his time with his beautiful, exotic girlfriend Elsa (Nailia Harzoune), a dancer.
Cecile’s mother died 12 years earlier when her daughter was a child. Cecile and Raymond are more like siblings at times than father and daughter, and playfully more like a romantic couple at others. They comforted one another after their loss, and now (warning to outsiders) they play solitaire together.
Into this Edenic summer comes a refined serpent named Anne Larson (Chloe Sevigny, staring daggers), a Paris fashion designer and dear friend of Cecile’s late mother, who drives a vintage, sporty Saab convertible and has lots of opinions about how the “lost” Cecile should be raised (for one, she needs to study more and stay away from Cyril). Anne has a palpable hold on Raymond. She wears her blonde hair in a tight chignon secured with a diabolical-looking silver prong.
Director Chew-Bose has the eye of an architect and landscape artist. She and cinematographer Maximilian Pittner show us the sculptural magnificence of the seaside’s rocky scarps, Dali-esque trees and the house with its stone, wood and colorful tiles. Early on, Chew-Bose arranges Cecile, Elsa and Anne, all eating apples, into a variation on a theme of Botticelli’s Three Graces, if not Three Eves.
This “Bonjour Tristesse” is a privileged rite of passage. Cecile models a lot of skimpy beachwear. We are invited to gaze in awe and wonder at her impossibly slender frame and youthful features. Twenty-seven-year-old McInerny, who makes Cecile a marvelous mystery, resembles Emma Stone and could pass for 17. Anne, who carves a pineapple with serial-killer precision, is concerned about how far Cecile and Cyril’s make-out sessions might go. Based on how Chew-Bose uses striking, still-life shots to build her vision board-like story image by image, I’d say the talented writer-director identifies with Anne’s sensible endorsement of finding oneself through hard work and good planning.
In another scene fraught with meaning, Cecile disentangles her maddeningly knotted earbuds. In Chew-Bose’s vision, the sun, moon, sea and landscape are the secret language of our existence. Fairy-faced Cecile stands en pointe between innocence and experience, trembling. She will topple. She drinks something pink and eats rosy ice cream. Chew-Bose, who should get a big career bounce thanks to this work of great restraint and artistry, shows us a dizzying cliff to suggest what is at stake. Someone sings about “felicita.” But is anyone happy or blessed? Well, it’s best to start out rich, thin and beautiful.“Bonjour Tristesse” is based on a scandalous 1954 novel that was published when its author was a mere 18-year-old fille. The new film was shot primarily in Cassis in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region of the French Riviera. McInerny, who debuted in the 2022 feature “Palm Trees and Power Lines,” helps to give “Bonjour Tristesse” its deep mystery and longing. She is a real find.
‘Bonjour Tristesse’
Rating: R for sexuality.
Cast: Lily McInerny, Chloe Sevigny, Claes Bang
Director: Durga Chew-Bose
Writers: Chew-Bose, Francoise Sagan
Running time: 110 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, Liberty Tree Mall 20, AMC Methuen 20 and other suburban theaters
Grade: A-
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