TIFF 2024: ‘Bonjour Tristesse’ is a Visually Striking but Emotionally Inert Adaptation of a French Classic

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | September 7, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | September 7, 2024 |

It’s an idyllic Summer on the beaches of the south of France for Cecile (Lily McInerny), a plucky adolescent holidaying with her father Raymond (Claes Bang.) They’re close, but he’s not a regular dad; he’s a cool dad who lets her do as she pleases, like pursue a passionate seasonal romance with local boy Cyril (Aliocha Schneider.) Not that Raymond can judge since he’s amusing himself with the company of Elsa (Nailia Harzoune), who’s only a few years older than Cecile. But this holiday of free-wheeling joy threatens to change dramatically with the arrival of Anne (Chloe Sevigny), a glamorous fashion designer and friend of Cecile’s late mother.

Francoise Sagan wrote Bonjour Tristesse when she was still a teenager, and its portrayal of precociousness and betrayal inspired both devotion and revulsion. The 1958 adaptation by Otto Preminger had a lukewarm reception upon its premiere but found its fans (like me) over time. It’s not hard to see why anyone would want to update the novella for modern times. Durga Chew-Bose, a Canadian cultural critic, has clear respect for the source material in her version, which she wrote and directed for her feature debut. But something is lost in translation and her efforts to bring it into a new era.

Chew-Bose seems driven as much by her interpretation of the text as a straightforward adaptation. Cecile projects the wise-beyond-her-years image of a young woman who is not ready for adulthood but asks enough philosophical-sounding questions to suggest otherwise. She wants to be so much more than a jealous little girl, which is what she ultimately is. The presence of a sophisticated, grown woman who knows herself and expects others to do so frightens her. When Anne arrives with perfectly coiffed hair that evokes Kim Novak in Vertigo and expensive pearl earrings, she’s a jolt of the real in a summer getaway built on fizzy fantasy. Chew-Bose submerges the viewer in this enviably beautiful holiday, willing to be languid in a way the efficiently plotted novella isn’t. All the more time to see what Cecile fears losing to Anne’s magnetic presence.

The locales and framing are handsomely mounted, elegant like Anne herself. It’s the kind of vacation villa that only appears in millionaires’ dreams and Chew-Bose is meticulous in capturing the details: the collection of shells on Cecile’s beach towel; the lace bedspread in Anne’s guest room; tables littered with orange slices and cigarettes. You can see why Cecile would be so hesitant to give it up.

But with that lazy summer haze comes a strange emotional inertness. All of the casting makes sense but there’s a lack of chemistry between Raymond, Anne, and Elsa. Claes Bang is no stranger to playing charismatic sleazes, so he’s ideal to play a horndog widow, but there’s no real passion. You don’t buy on a purely instinctive level why he’d be so eager to embrace Anne. She’s more understandable as a figure of simultaneous envy and fury for Cecile. Having the defining It Girl of the ’90s as a fashion queen with no patience for nonsense is ideal, although the 21st-century change to a decidedly ’50s novel does make you wonder why Anne is such a square. It’s Sevigny who gets the most affecting moments in the film, offering a good reminder that she’s all too often underused as an actress. Her best scene lets her beautifully expressive face do the talking, which sadly only further emphasizes how everyone else in this movie just announces how they’re feeling.

By seeking to modernize something so of its time, Bonjour Tristesse struggles to bring new ideas to fill in what it’s changed. Cecile’s burgeoning sexuality and desire to sleep with her boyfriend is a no-go area for Anne but why? It’s 2024. Chew-Bose wants to remove that scolding element but it’s still there because what else is there? The subtext of her close relationship with her father, who she calls by his first name and who seems more like a brother than parent, is still there but Chew-Bose seems too timid to extrapolate further. Frankly, this was a movie crying out for more psychosexual frisson.

Curiously for a writer, Chew-Bose seems more confident in her visuals than her words. There are moments here where a little goes a long way with how she allows the camera to do the talking. But mostly, everyone else is talking way too much. When they’re not speaking in moral platitudes, they’re announcing their emotional state to the world. It would have worked had the film been more heated, but it’s an ill fit with how relaxed everything else is.

Chew-Bose has great potential, but most of Bonjour Tristesse feels like a misfire, albeit an earnest one. It’s pretty but in trying to expand upon the portrayal of a young woman’s emotional growth, it proves dishearteningly limiting in its ideas. Looking good just isn’t enough.

Bonjour Tristesse had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. It currently does not have a release date.