Another 'Bonjour Tristesse' slinks into moody view, glamorous but more headbound

The operation of adolescence’s slippery hedonism and the French Riviera’s languid aerial spurred the explosive popularity of Françoise Sagan’s 1954 caller “Bonjour Tristesse,” written erstwhile the writer was herself a teenager. Otto Preminger’s 1958 adaptation, pairing the then-scandalous communicative with a luminous Jean Seberg, Deborah Kerr and David Niven — positive an experimental usage of some Technicolor and monochrome — lone burnished its appeal, inspiring the French New Wave to boot. Jean Luc-Godard erstwhile said helium could person dissolved from that movie’s last changeable to the opening of his “Breathless” with a elemental transitional text: “Three years later.”

Six decades on, though, tin a caller movie from Sagan’s summertime communicative seizure that aforesaid breezy intrigue? In the lawsuit of Canadian writer-director Durga Chew-Bose’s confidently composed debut feature, the reply is some yes and not quite. Some backdrops and scenarios are sturdy capable to support their hot-and-cool entreaty and this “Bonjour Tristesse,” with its dreamy seaside luxuriance and charismatic cast, makes bully usage of that familiarity arsenic it mixes vintage glamour with modern details.

But successful Chew-Bose’s passionateness to excavation deeper into the circumstances underpinning a young girl’s life-altering cruelty, there’s an over-intellectualization of motive, a request to continually ace the sleek aboveground of Sagan’s bourgeois characters with self-reflection. It yet undercuts a communicative whose strongest suit has ever been its briskness.

Under the bluest entity and against shimmering waters, Cécile (Lily McInerny) is having a aureate summer, spending prime clip with her charming, handsome dad, Raymond (Claes Bang), and his cool, younger dancer woman Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune) astatine their secluded villa, portion enjoying a fling with attentive, good-looking section lad Cyril (Aliocha Schneider).

That dynamic shifts with the unexpected accomplishment of Anne (Chloë Sevigny), a brittle manner decorator and beloved person of Cécile’s deceased mother. With her pulled-back hair, buttoned-up shirts and agelong skirts, and a code with Cécile that’s affable yet auntie-ish, Anne brings to the frolicsome vibe a cooling maturity, a benignant of watchfulness. But also, successful the rekindling of a dormant closeness betwixt Anne and Raymond, there’s an imminent aboriginal that Cécile isn’t acceptable for. Could she forestall that from happening and support her brat summertime going?

The caller and Preminger’s movie relied connected the instrumentality that its protagonist was looking backmost connected monumental events from the position of that rubric sadness, truthful Chew-Bose’s defiantly in-the-moment telling, kissed by Maximilian Pittner’s sun-drenched imagery, feels similar a bonus astatine first. The manager besides leans nicely into interstitial shots that orient america without attitude, portion her prime of music, led by Lesley Barber’s lilting score, is simply a existent mood-setter of romance and melancholy.

But erstwhile Chew-Bose reaches for interiority with hyperaware dialog (democratically applied to each character), thing is lost. “She’s imagining what she looks similar to us,” Elsa comments to Raymond aboriginal connected arsenic they observe his girl similar a specimen. Later on, Cécile says to her dad, “Your soundlessness is antithetic — I’m not successful connected it.” These aren’t lines, they dependable similar an actor’s notes connected however to play thing wordlessly.

It’s arsenic if everyone’s a budding essayist connected psychology, which makes a concern that trades connected recklessness and delusion harder to swallow. Everyone sounds excessively astute to beryllium prone to error, though Sevigny comes closest, embodying idiosyncratic successful a precarious authorities of affectional susceptibility, whose evident quality hides unspoken wounds.

There are ways of exposing the vulnerabilities of the omniscient and/or precocious erstwhile navigating matters of the heart. (Éric Rohmer has galore good examples.) But Chew-Bose’s attack yet feels much objective than revelatory. One tin admit the effort down this well-made “Bonjour Tristesse” without needfully feeling its turmoil.