Less than five minutes into her debut feature, “Bonjour Tristesse,” as faultlessly framed shots of the rippling French seaside and all of its natural wonders cascade across the screen, director Durga Chew-Bose announces herself as one of the great contemporary image-makers. For anyone who’s fitfully torn through the pages of Chew-Bose’s 2017 essay collection, “Too Much and Not the Mood” — adored equally by critics, readers and a musician you might’ve heard of called Lorde — that’ll come as no surprise. She has a knack for holding a feeling so gently that it can be examined without corruption, a method of narrative writing that feels disarmingly intimate. But for those who know “Bonjour Tristesse” as a familiar title, Chew-Bose’s film might raise an eyebrow.
The movie is, after all, the second cinematic retelling of Françoise Sagan’s classic 1954 coming-of-age novel, about a teenage girl named Cécile, whose idyllic summer in the south of France is interrupted by her father’s rigid new lover, Anne. Sagan’s novel was adapted into a film four years later, where French New Wave icon Jean Seberg put a cherubic face to Cécile’s scheming. Both the book and the film have been adolescent media mainstays for decades, which makes attempting a new version all the more bold. But Chew-Bose’s sublimely fresh take on a familiar tale is unburdened by comparisons. Her “Bonjour Tristesse” brings viewers deeper into Anne and Cécile’s stilted relationship, noting how they quietly clash despite their villa being big enough for the two of them. Their power struggle represents a conflict as timeless as the story of “Bonjour Tristesse,” one where we push against change so stubbornly that our resistance turns to cruelty. The summer sun beats down on our skin so intensely that it feels like it could last forever, but admitting that it won’t is purely unreasonable.
