“She is imagining what she looks like to us as practice for when she wants to be seen,” a woman remarks early in “Bonjour Tristesse” of the teenage Cécile (Lily McInerny), whose mischievous experiment in womanhood is the subject of Durga Chew-Bose’s beguiling first film.
Adapted from Françoise Sagan’s 1954 novel, “Bonjour Tristesse” dips into a well once tapped by the prolific director Otto Preminger — a bold choice for a first-time filmmaker. But Chew-Bose makes a convincing case for the remake by showing, like Cécile, a keen awareness of how to direct a gaze.
The film follows Cécile, a teenager from the United States, over a summer on the French Riviera with her roguish father, Raymond (Claes Bang), and Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune), his summer fling. Lazing seaside, Cécile enjoys the couple’s company, but the serene scene frays upon the arrival of Anne (Chloë Sevigny), a refined family friend who undermines our protagonist’s status as the apple of daddy’s eye.
While Jean Seberg once imbued Cécile with girlish petulance, McInerny gives the role an electric charge of ambivalence. We see our protagonist study Elsa and Anne’s womanly powers with a blend of longing and trepidation. Here, more so than in Preminger’s adaptation, the absence of Cécile’s mother is made to feel tangible.
Chew-Bose directs her camera to elegantly glance off bodies, fabrics and seawater. She individualizes her characters through habits and gestures, like the different ways each woman eats her morning apple. A work of image and mood, “Bonjour Tristesse” captures the mythopoetic wonder of an adolescent summer, and the effect is trancelike.
Bonjour Tristesse
Rated R for budding female sexuality. In French and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters.
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