Producers: Katie Bird Nolan, Lindsay Tapscott, Christina Piovesan, Noah Segal, Julie Viez, Joe Iacono, Durga Chew-Bose, Benito Mueller and Wolfgang Mueller   Director: Durga Chew-Bose   Screenplay: Durga Chew-Bose   Cast: Lily McInerny, Claes Bang, Chloë Sevigny, Nailia Harzoune, Aliocha Schneider, Nathalie Richard, Thierry Harcourt and Rebecca Dayan    Distributor: Greenwich Entertainment

Grade: C+

During the later stage of his career in the fifties and sixties, Otto Preminger had a penchant for choosing provocative material for his films—partially, at least, to pique public interest in the controversial movies that resulted.  So it should come as no surprise that he optioned Françoise Sagan’s 1954 novel for adaptation to the screen—a book thought scandalous at the time, in part because the story of a teenage girl’s disruption of her father’s engagement was itself written by a teenager.  The movie appeared in 1958 to a mixed reception (except in France, where the young film devotees who would soon create the Nouvelle Vague greeted it rapturously), but more recently it has been reassessed much more favorably by critics.

So Durga Chew-Bose puts herself at some risk by remaking the book as her first feature. The effort is an admirable debut, evoking a palpable atmosphere of ennui among the rich and aimless, but it’s hobbled by a few miscalculations.

Lily McInerny is the statuesque Cécile, who cuts a strikingly beautiful figure while lolling on the beach in the French Riviera summer, often in the company of the boy next door, Cyril (Aliocha Schneider).  She lives a life of indolence and pleasure with her father Raymond (Claes Bang), a widower who’s enjoying the favors of his most recent young mistress, dancer Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune).  Cécile has no use for school—she’s failed her exams back in Paris—and her father is not just her enabler but her companion in a lifestyle of ease without responsibility.  

The routine to which Cécile’s become accustomed is disrupted by the arrival of Anne (Chloë Sevigny), an old friend of Raymond and his deceased wife.  She’s an elegant, proper sort, who undertakes to become Cécile’s mentor in maturation, something the girl resists.  Cécile’s appalled when Raymond sets aside Elsa, a kindred spirit, for Anne, who prohibits her spending time with Cyril, and even more so when Raymond announces that Anne has agreed to marry him.  So she plots to break them up, enlisting Elsa and Cyril in a scheme that involves arranging for Anne to find Raymond in a compromising situation with Elsa.  The plot succeeds, but brings tragic consequences.

In their adaptation of Sagan’s slim book, Preminger and writer Arthur Laurents chose to expand, treating the original story as an extended, glossily colored flashback narrated a year later by Cécile as she has resumed her dissolute life, shown in lengthy black-and-white interludes.  Chew-Bose, by contrast, sticks closely to the book’s narrative, relegating the future to a relatively brief epilogue. 

Yet her version runs considerably longer than Preminger’s trim one, despite his inclusion of long, frankly extraneous dance sequences.  That’s because it’s so languorously paced, which allows for Chew-Bose, editor Amelie Labreche, cinematographer Maximilian Pittner, production designer Francois-Renaud Labarthe and costumer Miyako Bellizzi to show off their skill at mise-en-scène.  The result is often rapturously lovely, especially when accompanied by the tinkly piano runs of Lesley Barber’s score.  But it does make for a somewhat turgid overall feel.

The attempt to update the tale, moreover, is misguided.  It doesn’t really amount to much—a few uses of cellphones, mostly—but it does clash with the fact that this is essentially a period piece, a story grounded in the late-fifties, postwar ambience of spiritual alienation that drove so much European filmmaking of the time.  It would have been wiser to play it as such.

Moreover, while the casting is mostly spot-on, with the suitably pouty McInerny convincingly caught on the cusp of adulthood, Bang just marginally seedy as an ageing rake, and Harzoune and Schneider both excellent as the supporting players in Cécile’s nasty scheme, Sevigny seems wrong for Anne.  In Preminger’s film Deborah Kerr naturally embodied the qualities the character required—elegance, delicacy and fragility.  Sevigny tries hard to capture them too, but in her case it feels effortful.  One need only compare her handling of the crucial scene when Anne is confronted by Raymond’s infidelity— Chew-Bose and Preminger stage it similarly, with the camera firmly fixed on Anne’s face as she watches the offscreen couple hearing snatches of their dialogue—to gauge the difference.

So sadly, the virtues of Chew-Bose “Bonjour Tristesse” are diminished by some serious flaws.