Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Durga Chew-Bose
Starring: Lily McInerny, Claes Bang, Chloë Sevigny, Nailia Harzoune, Aliocha Schneider
For her feature debut, writer/director Durga Chew-Bose has opted to adapt Françoise Sagan's 1954 literary sensation Bonjour Tristesse. The book was previously brought to the screen by Otto Preminger in 1958, though that version is now largely remembered solely for a breakout lead performance by Jean Seberg that launched a million pixie cuts. The Seberg role, that of a restless and manipulative teenage girl holidaying in France with her playboy father, here goes to Lily McInerny, who delivered one of the best debut performances of the last decade in 2022's underseen Palm Trees and Power Lines. This pretty but vacant adaptation of Sagan's work will likely fade even quicker than Preminger's, but indie casting directors should be as struck by McInerny as their Hollywood studio counterparts were with Seberg all those decades ago.
The twentysomething McInerny brings her uncanny ability to convince as a gangly teenager to play once again as Cecile, an 18-year-old who is simultaneously childlike and worldly, a doe in the spindly body of a fawn. Spending her summer on the French coast with her bohemian father Raymond (Claes Bang) and his latest girlfriend Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune), Cecile distracts herself with a romantic entanglement with a local boy, Cyril (Aliocha Schneider). Raymond and Cecile have the sort of impossibly cool father/daughter relationship that sees them share cigarettes and speak about any topic under the sun, and we get the impression that Cecile hasn't been scolded once since her mother passed away when we she was six.
When the trio are joined by Anne (Chloë Sevigny), a New York fashion designer and former best friend of Cecile's late mum, the teenager finds that three's company but four's a crowd. As though fulfilling a promise to her mother, Anne behaves in a maternal way towards Anne that the teen doesn't appreciate, tightening a parental leash that long ago fell limp in her father's hand. When Raymond and Anne suddenly announce they plan to wed, Cecile conspires to become saboteur.
From the opening shots of its impossibly scenic setting, there's much to draw us in here. Chew-Bose displays a Sofia Coppola-esque attention to tactile details, her camera honing in on minutiae like the odd way someone butters their toast or holds a cigarette. The characters are initially engaging, holding the sort of bohemian conversations bookish college kids dream of spending their summers getting wrapped up in. In her second role, McInerny is once again enthralling as a confused teenager making a series of bad decisions. Bang's winning blend of himbo charm and vulnerability makes Raymond more likeable than he probably should be. The part of Anne is underwritten, but Sevigny makes something of it through small gestures like how she smooths her dress during an uncomfortable conversation, or how the movement of her eyes draws invisible lines between other characters.
The trouble with bohemians is that they might be fun to spend a Saturday night with, but on Monday morning they're as boring as anyone else. The novelty of these people's company runs out around the halfway mark when Bonjour Tristesse becomes little more than a humourless riff on The Parent Trap as Cecile schemes to reunite her father with Elsa.
Like the viewer, Anne has spent enough time around these people to have grown tired of their beatnik superficiality, and she's the character who really should be the audience surrogate, the one whose eyes we view the story through. But this is an adaptation of a novel written by a teenage girl, and the adult writer/director is incapable of translating its youthful naivete in convincing manner. The movie scolds Cecile rather than presenting or substantially interrogating her point of view, and as such she comes off as little more than a spoiled brat. Updating the setting to the 2020s makes dialogue that might have been considered profound in the 1950s come off as laughably affected to 21st century ears. Once you grow tired of basking in its idyllic backdrop, this Bonjour Tristesse will have you wishing to bid adieu well before it reaches its pat conclusion.
Bonjour Tristesse is on UK/ROI VOD from August 25th.
