Bonjour Tristesse comes with a history. Its source is a 1954 novel by French writer Françoise Sagan, a teenager at the time. In the story, a teenaged girl whose mother has died and is much attached to her father, learns over a summer on the French Riviera that love can be fickle, destructive and sad.
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The book was made into a movie in 1958 with a full Hollywood treatment – major movie stars and rich cinematography, put together by the celebrity, sometimes pretentious but ground-breaking producer/director Otto Preminger. David Niven plays the father. Deborah Kerr, the woman he claims to love, and the daughter is played by Jean Seberg a thrilling young actress. At 16, this young girl from Iowa won a contest, staged by Preminger, to play Joan of Arc in his film Saint Joan. Bonjour Tristesse is her second picture with Preminger.
That’s a lot of baggage for the young-ish Canadian director of the new Bonjour Tristesse, Durga Chew-Bose to carry. The 1958 movie came out on the cusp of the French New Wave, which brought life – and sex – into a film culture which had grown stodgy. The movie’s story of a man who juggles lovers while his teenaged daughter is trying to figure out love and sex, appealed to viewers for many years. And the locations are dreamy.
The new film is different, but maybe not enough. On the up side, director Durga Chew-Bose doesn’t have to deal with the first film’s awesome star power. That original cast, plus the South of France, could simply dazzle audiences. At Hollywood’s height, films embodied glitz, and Bonjour Tristesse had plenty. This new film has little distracting star power, and at least a bit of modesty to bring the story down to a level actual human beings might understand.
On the down side, when you get right to it, the story is about obscenely privileged people living in a magnificent place, and compared to the lives most people lead, it’s bizarrely trivial and out of touch. A cynical person might say that this film is nothing but a lot of the luckiest people on Earth bemoaning their fate. In 1958, some thought the film’s focus on the emotions of a kid made the picture immature. Now, we tend to credit the feelings of an 18-year-old as legitimate, which the new film does in spades.
This version opens with young Cecile (Lily McInerney) smooching her young man in the Mediterranean before she joins her father Raymond (Claes Bang) and his latest girlfriend Elsa (Nailia Harzoune). Pretty soon, Anne (Chloë Sevigny) shows up, expecting romance with Raymond, but soon turning cold and terse.
Director Chew-Bose maps out precise choreographies of the characters. A breakfast scene swirls like a tricky emotional dance as the women mark their turf around Raymond.
Raymond’s mind-boggling carelessness gives the movie its grab. He moves from Elsa to Anne without a hitch, and what unsettles the most is that he treats Cecile almost like another lover. The movie avoids anything obviously incestuous, but the intimate talking and touching between father and daughter get your attention right quick.
Best, though, the new movie leaves viewers space to take things in, to notice nuances and unexpected moments without telling you how to react. No one ever thought Otto Preminger was subtle.
The film opens at theaters on May 2. For show times, visit here.
