The pitiable ephebic desire to strain towards the responsibility of adulthood is put on full display in Durga Chew-Bose’s Bonjour Tristesse. Unfortunately, the beauty of its Mediterranean coastline setting alone isn’t enough to carry the weight of lacklustre performances and erratic movements in the plot. The project marks seasoned Canadian writer Durga-Chew Bose’s first foray into feature filmmaking and was both written and directed by Chew-Bose. Bonjour Tristesse is the second film adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s famous 1954 French novel of the same name. The first adaptation was directed by Otto Preminger, director of the seminal film noir Laura, in 1958.
Bonjour Tristesse tells the coming-of-age story of privileged and lackadaisical teenager Cécile (Lily McInerny) as she summers with her unctuous father Raymond (Claes Bang) and father’s whimsical girlfriend Elsa (Nailia Harzoune) on the French Riviera. Raymond is a philanderer and a dilettante, while Elsa is the stereotypical cloyingly carefree but ponderous French woman. They are both easy to dislike. Cécile is embroiled in a romance with Cyril (Aliocha Schneider), the jocular mama’s boy from next door. The ease of Cécile’s summer life comes to an abrupt end upon the inauspicious visit of the cultured, metropolitan Anne (Chloë Sevigny), a woman with whom Cécile’s deceased mother had a very close relationship.
The dowager-like Anne is quick to establish herself as an authority figure in the household and she takes it upon herself to act as Cécile’s mother-regent, much to the teenager’s perturbation. Anne slowly beguiles Raymond with her intelligence and quiet charm, which culminates in Raymond’s rejection of Elsa in favour of proposing marriage to Anne. The relationship between Anne and Cécile, which started as a mutual tenuous curiosity, sours when Anne begins to impose parental law.
Bonjour Tristesse presents the viewer with many intriguing threads. There is the Electra-like relationship between the womanizing Raymond and his post-pubescent daughter, Anne’s independent success in the fashion world and her insistence upon a woman’s education, and Cécile’s nascent sexuality that she explores with Cyril. Unfortunately, the movie’s many working themes are prevented from fruiting by the cast’s deadpan line delivery, overall storyboarding incoherence, and the general closedness of the characters.
The feature’s dialogue is sparse and its conveyance by the ensemble feels forced. When exchanges do happen, they are always penetrated by what feel like platitudinous lines taken verbatim from the original French text. Lines such as, “The past is so conventional,” “Everyone looks vulnerable in socks,” and “Being organized is very emotional for some women.” This tonal inconsistency makes it difficult for the viewer to have ingress into the lives of the characters, who each seem to speak with two discordant voices. In addition, there are frequent, disorienting jump cuts that make the chronology of events difficult to follow. It all swirls around your head and never lands.
Visually, the film pays homage to the blistering white light of the French Riviera displayed in Jacques Rivette’s La Piscine – the sort of stark luminosity that exposes even the smallest vellus hair. There is also an Almodóvarian influence in the primary colours and geometrical patterns of the interior of Raymond’s lavish seaside home. Equally pretty to look at is the costuming. Cécile is dressed the gamine in sleek body-skimming swimsuits and baggy loungewear. Anne has a royal air in her diaphanous blouses, country club Bermudas, and permanent chignon bun.
Unfortunately, the film is a whisper of beauty without much wisdom to impart. It is a perfect time capsule for storytelling methods of the now – it offers you little and seems to suggest that you would be foolhardy to try and interpolate its message. Bonjour Tristesse tacitly announces that it is a film with valuable substance, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way.
