The New ‘Bonjour Tristesse’ Takes a Soulful Spin on a Classic Tale
April 16, 2025
When I first read Françoise Sagan’s 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse, a classic of French literature, I hated it. I was 18 at the time, studying in Paris, trying my best to live out a year of carefully curated hedonism. So who else to turn to than Sagan’s 17-year-old heroine Cécile, a golden-skinned française luxuriating in glamorous boredom in the South of France?
The book locks you into the head of this cruel, apathetic teenager, whose relationships to those around her last only as long as they serve to entertain her. With a dead mother and a rich playboy father, Raymond, she has no one to set a better example for her—certainly not her father’s frivolous young mistress, Elsa, or the vapid socialites they surround themselves with. They are all frozen in time, unable to grow and evolve, until the arrival of Anne, an old friend of Cécile’s mother, who decides it’s time to set things to order, much to Cécile’s fury. The teenager decides to wage war on the interloper, leading to the novel’s ultimate tragedy.
The original film adaptation from 1958, starring Jean Seberg, uses a V.O. of Cécile’s inner monologue to bring us into her ennui-riddled frame of mind. She is more childish and innocent than the novel’s jaded narrator, which makes the eventual shattering of her empty lifestyle feel more unexpected and disturbing.
A new film adaptation from Canadian director Durga Chew-Bose, set for release on May 2nd, takes a different direction, however. Though the story beats are the same, tragedy calmly follows our characters from the outset. Rather than painting Cécile (Lily McInerney) and Raymond (Claes Bang) as vicious pleasure-seekers, the film poses the loss of Cécile’s mother as the instigating factor behind their stunted development and aimless way of living. By highlighting her absence, Chew-Bose allows the two characters to be more sympathetic and three-dimensional. “When her mother died, she and I became close in a manner I never could have predicted,” Raymond says to Elsa (played by the French actress Nailia Harzoune). “Or perhaps my understanding of what closeness is changed, everything changed. Suddenly, we knew nothing… and then we became very good at knowing nothing.”
This Cécile is not the mischievous gamine of Jean Seberg, but something quieter, careful, more intense. She gives the impression of being a spectator in her own life, taking cues from others around her on how to look, speak, and act. This is visually represented in the casting of Elsa and Cécile, who are easily mistaken for one another in early scenes, posed in partial obscurity so that you don’t immediately know which one you’re looking at. Later on, Cécile will take on more visual cues from Anne (played here with stiff chicness by Chloë Sevigny), indicating her shifting allegiance and ultimate acceptance of Anne’s worldview.
Elsa, too, is markedly different from her 1950s counterpart. Rather than a vacuous bimbo, she is portrayed as being sharp and observant, self-assured and seductive. This makes her anger at Raymond eventually choosing Anne over her feel more earned—she is more than simply an object of his desire, but a human being grappling with messy feelings of jealousy and betrayal.
Adding depth to the film’s other characters, including Cécile’s young lover Cyril, makes it clear how purposeful Raymond and Cécile’s habit of distancing themselves from others is. They are bonded through a mutual commitment to their shared escapist fantasy, which leaves them grasping for one another as they willingly self-destruct their other relationships.
The film is beautiful, shot in Cassis, a small fishing village near Marseille known for its calanques, where striking limestone cliffs drop into narrow inlets, and vivid blue water meets the Riviera’s signature pebble beaches. The cinematography makes impeccable use of the setting, through the interplay between rich colors and seductive shadows, a glass of orange juice given as much careful caressing as the languid body of our heroine, half-obscured, napping in a sun chair.
In fact, food and drink play a significant role the film’s visual storytelling. While Elsa and Cécile munch on apples at breakfast, Anne slices savagely into hers, eating each piece straight off the knife. An earlier scene of Cécile smearing a stick of butter directly onto a slice of toast is later countered by Anne lathering it on with a knife. When we then watch her chop up a pineapple with calculated precision, there is no room for confusion—Anne is the sharp blade ready to face off against the languorous, lazy Elsa, with Cécile as her honing rod.
The one place where the visuals fall flat is the occasional closeup on Cécile’s iPhone, which feels anachronistic in a landscape that is otherwise timeless. The choice to have her use wired headphones with it feels particularly bizarre—why include a piece of current technology, while making it appear just slightly out of date? It could have easily been left out, and the film likely would have passed for a period piece if so, since the frenetic pace of smartphone culture is completely at odds with the story being told. This is a film that is slow by design, forcing you to resonate with the boredom and aimlessness that dictate the lives of Raymond and Cécile. But it’s worth giving into the pacing, luxuriating in the sensuous visuals and enviable lifestyles of these characters. What Chew-Bose does that is so impressive is to give this story more than just an aesthetic language—she gives it a soul, one which throbs in gorgeous agony with each crash of the waves on a rocky shore.
