Based on the bestselling novel by Francoise Sagan, published when the author was just eighteen herself, Bonjour Tristesse<\/em> tells the story of C\u00e9cile, a feckless young woman whose black-and-white life in Paris is a roundelay of parties, restaurants, and nightclubs; her playboy father Raymond (an expertly stagnant David Niven, already riffing on his caddish onscreen persona five years before The Pink Panther<\/em>) is also in attendance, usually with a new young lovely on his arm. But while she\u2019s dancing with this week\u2019s suitor, C\u00e9cile makes eye contact with the camera and we\u2019re whisked away in her memory to the fateful summer before on the French Riviera, blooming in vibrant Technicolor. The setting makes it sound like ideal seasonal viewing, and in many ways it is \u2013 if the person you\u2019d most like to get away from is yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n C\u00e9cile and Raymond have come to this idyllic paradise for what\u2019s clearly a habitual escapade for them, with Raymond bringing along his latest squeeze, the effervescent but intellectually dim Elsa (Myl\u00e8ne Demongeot). C\u00e9cile and Raymond are sickeningly sweet in their vaudevillian routine of domesticity, wearing the same unbuttoned blue shirt over their swimsuits and greeting each other and everyone in the house with a cheery \u201cGood morning.\u201d It\u2019s worn thin with the rotation of female maids subject to Raymond\u2019s sexual harassments, and it\u2019s beginning to wear thin for seventeen-year-old C\u00e9cile, though she\u2019s not yet aware of it. The sun may be shining but the familial relations are about to get as rocky as the beach\u2019s terrain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In a move that feels unusual for the time, and probably still would be today, we are never told how long C\u00e9cile and her father have been alone together or how it happened. No effort is made to psychologize the mother\u2019s absence; Sagan \u2013 and by extension Preminger \u2013 prefers to let C\u00e9cile and Raymond\u2019s behavior speak for itself. And their behavior is often abominable, particularly once Anne (the ever elegant Deborah Kerr), an old friend of C\u00e9cile\u2019s mother, arrives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In some ways, it makes sense that Seberg and Preminger\u2019s second (and final) collaboration would be such a twisted father-daughter tale, given their history. Whether he intended it or not, Preminger made one of the great films about internalized misogyny with Bonjour Tristesse<\/em>, all while being an undeniable misogynist himself. His onset behavior could be tyrannical and, as co-star Myl\u00e8ne Demongeot later recalled, Seberg often bore the brunt of it: \u201c[W]hen we all arrived on the set of Bonjour Tristesse<\/em> she carried on her shoulders the weight of guilt\u2026 Jean was scared of him so he would take advantage and eventually became very mean to her.\u201d When the film received a cool response as well (the BFI’s Monthly Film Bulletin<\/em> wrote that Seberg \u201cspeaks rather than acts her lines\u201d), it nearly ended her career.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was the French film industry that would give her a second onscreen life. Seberg met her first husband Fran\u00e7ois Moreuil while filming Bonjour Tristesse<\/em> and stayed on in the country after it wrapped. By 1960, Jean-Luc Godard had cast her in her iconic Breathless<\/em> role which he saw as a natural continuation of C\u00e9cile\u2019s destiny. \u201cI could have taken the last shot of Preminger’s film and started after dissolving to a title: \u2018Three years later,\u2019\u201d he said. Still, Seberg\u2019s end would be a sad one; relentlessly hounded by COINTELPRO for her involvement with the Black Panther Party, she turned to drink and was dead by forty. Watching Bonjour Tristesse<\/em> now, it\u2019s hard to feel like she ever came out from under the cloud of its creation. It makes for a great performance, but possibly at the expense of a great life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Bonjour Tristesse” is available for digital rental or purchase<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/bonjour-Tristesse2-1024x435.jpg\")
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Divorc\u00e9e Anne is more patrician than her hosts, a well-educated working woman who may prove to be a good influence on C\u00e9cile if she lets her. \u201cI cannot be casual,\u201d she announces when Raymond puts his inevitable moves on her. Soon Raymond has given Elsa the boot and announces his engagement to Anne. C\u00e9cile, forced to consider herself through Anne\u2019s eyes and not entirely liking what she sees, resolves to break them up. Inevitable tragedy ensues, with C\u00e9cile getting what she wants only to realize it no longer means anything to her. Back in the monochrome present, she finally understands the limbo she and her father have damned themselves to live in, desperately clinging to their cycle of destruction because neither can bear to be the one to spoil the fun with the true intimacy of knowing oneself.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n