“Packing a bag and visiting an old friend by the sea is spectacular,” says our protagonist’s father – or is it? There might be a few ways this set-up could go, but likely all of them contain lessons learned, for better or for worse. With this premise in mind, author-turned-writer-director Durga Chew-Bose’s debut film, Bonjour Tristesse, is her take on Françoise Sagan’s original 1954 novel of the same name, written at the age of 18, which first had a 1958 English-language film adaptation by Otto Preminger. The film has enjoyed its world premiere in the Discovery section of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.

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Eighteen-year-old Cécile (Lily McInerny) spends her time sunbathing, collecting seashells and indulging with her summer love Cyril (Aliocha Schneider) at a villa – one to rival the tempting isolation of the property in Godard’s Contempt – outside of Marseille. Her doting, widowed father Raymond (Claes Bang) is loved up by the younger Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune), the trio a playful yet carefully crafted family on the French Riviera. Raymond calls Cécile his “accomplice”, but the dissolution of the tender family dynamics is perhaps a fait accompli marked by the arrival in the villa of the accomplished yet often unreadable Anne (Chloë Sevigny), a voguish old friend of Cécile’s parents.

One viewing will quickly dispel any comparisons to Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
Q&A : Luca Guadagnino
fiche film], even if the Venn diagram intersection of both luxurious oceanside settings and families’ socioeconomic personas seems to be a circle. While Cécile often acts impulsively and brashly – with a tinge of familial-taught restraint – Anne calmly cuts and eats apples straight off the knife, doling out witticisms disguised as aphorisms (“Everyone looks vulnerable in socks”). Establishing shots of rocky beaches pull us repeatedly back to the environment, accompanied by the twinkle of Impressionist, Debussy-inspired arpeggiated piano and string leitmotifs, with a luscious original score by Lesley Barber (Manchester by the Sea). On the soundtrack, music reminiscent of French and Italian oldies are mixed with dance music set for a high-end seaside resort.

Chew-Bose puts together an indomitable collection of collaborators. With the help of cinematographer Maximilian Pittner, she frames most two-person conversational scenes in tight and isolated, wide-angled medium close-ups of each speaker, a decision that leads us to hyper-analyse each subtle facial twitch. Bonjour Tristesse is bathed in an omnipresence of blue, from the sky and sun-dappled ocean waters to the villa decor (with detailed production design by François Renaud-Labarthe, Irma Vep [+lire aussi :
critique
interview : Olivier Assayas
fiche série]) and Cécile’s apparel items of choice (with costume design by Miyako Bellizzi, Uncut Gems). The writer-director’s adaptation of the film for the modern day leads us to fixate on our young protagonist’s attachment to her iPhone (enveloped in a blue case), while other characters avoid devices entirely throughout.

Chew-Bose signs a novel adaptation that doesn’t take after more narratively disjointed book adaptations of recent years. She bursts onto the film scene as a debut writer-director with a firm yet expressive grasp on structure (and precise yet subtle comedic sensibilities), but a more bookish, figurative approach to dialogue, for those who know her work in prose. With limited interiority from Cécile and some intimate moments with other characters, Bonjour Tristesse borders on having a third-person, omniscient PoV, casting a fable-like quality on the film. Cécile’s discomfort at the newfound dynamics is palpable, in part thanks to an amusingly relatable and oft-angsty performance by McInerny, but it can be hard to parse through some of the film’s more affecting moments, and other character motivations remain surface-level.

By the end, Chew-Bose must tap us on the shoulder, narrative-wise, in order to remind us that this is a coming-of-age story, in case we’ve forgotten – forcing us to recalibrate our metrics of the scenes before. The film’s two hours float by like a boat on the Riviera waters – languorous with a delicious sprinkling of lingering disquietude. Oh, such beautiful, privileged indolence: j’ai la flemme.

Bonjour Tristesse is a Canadian-German co-production between Toronto-based Babe Nation Films, Toronto-based Elevation Pictures and Berlin-based Barry Films. Its international sales are managed by Film Constellation.