The Two ‘Bonjour Tristesse’s: Deborah Kerr Versus Chloë Sevigny

Otto Preminger‘s Bonjour Tristesse (1958) and Durga Chew-Bose‘s Bonjour Tristesse (2024) offer two very different interpretations of Françoise Sagan‘s text, but both are worth watching.

Basic Premise:

Ever since her mother died, Cécile (Jean Seberg/Lily McInerny) and her father Raymond (David Niven/Claes Bang) have been inseparable. During the summer this film takes place over they’re meant to be vacationing on the French Riviera with Raymond’s girlfriend, Elsa (Mylène Demongeot/Nailia Harzoune). Without consulting his daughter, Raymond invites a fourth — Anne (Deborah Kerr/Chloë Sevigny) — to join them, upending their happy little trio in the process.

Structure:

The first major way that these two films split is in how they begin. Whereas Preminger opted to start in the present, before going back in time to show what happened to make Cécile and Raymond the way they are, Chew-Bose’s version plays out in chronological order and doesn’t give away that anything bad is going to happen during their French vacation.

The start-at-the-end-and-then-rewind story structure is nothing new but has become extremely popular on film and television lately. It’s the one flaw I had with Sinners — that need to give away that vampires are coming instead of letting it come as a surprise.

As much as I feel this story structure has been overused, I think it actually gives Preminger’s Bonjour Tristesse more momentum than Chew-Bose’s. A lot of that comes down how much information is still not given away by the present day sequences. We see a much faker and falsely happy father-daughter duo in those moments, and clearly Elsa and Anne aren’t in their lives anymore, but we don’t know why.

The visual power Preminger gets out of filming the past in color and the present in black-and-white (a flip on the usual approach) cannot be overly stressed either. Especially the actual moment where Seberg’s Cécile is dancing and color starts to enter the frame — it’s absolutely sumptuous. Chew-Bose may capture the heat and laziness the sun inspires more in her color version (and having actual French people speaking French doesn’t hurt for authenticity) but capturing boredom doesn’t necessarily make for the most exciting cinema.

With Preminger’s film, too, there’s less of a sense that this is only how Cécile and Raymond behave in the summer. Time is kind of meaningless in their very responsibility-free world, where they can do whatever they want when they want without any cares or worries. Because we only see Cécile and Raymond during the summer in Chew-Bose’s movie it’s less clear whether this is normal for them or if they are just taking things easy because they’re off from school and work. Their behavior sets off less alarm bells because on vacation, being lazy is normal.

Casting:

The other big difference between the two films has to do with casting, as well as how certain characters are written differently by Arthur Laurents for Preminger’s film and Chew-Bose for hers. Having never read Sagan’s novella, it’s difficult to say which performances are truer to the source material.

Sevigny’s Anne arguably comes across as colder. If Kerr’s Anne looks the part of a fashion designer more in her Givenchy clothes, Sevigny’s is actually shown sketching and working on designs.

There’s also some laying it on thick with the visual motifs in Chew-Bose’s film, like having Anne always wear her hair in a tight bun before letting it loose as her relationship with Raymond turns romantic (very Hitchcock blonde) or being the only one to use utensils when eating.

That being said, while Anne having been Cécile’s mother’s best friend is a throwaway line in Preminger’s movie, Chew-Bose actually uses that information and has Cécile’s mom be a topic of conversation. As a result, Sevigny’s Anne and McInerny’s Cécile have more real conversions in their movie. Their relationship feels more personal, which makes Cécile later wanting to break up her father and Anne feel more personal, too. In Preminger’s film the problem seems to be less Anne specifically than her father wanting to be in a serious relationship at all but that’s also because of how Elsa is portrayed in both movies.

While Demongeot’s Elsa is more intelligent than she’s given credit for, her relationship with Raymond is undoubtedly less deep. Harzoune’s Elsa, on the other hand, is much more grounded and less of a punchline than Demongeot’s, so when Raymond dumps her it comes across as cruel rather than as only a matter of time.

The Ending:

The problem with making both Elsa and Cécile’s boyfriend (Geoffrey Horne in Preminger’s film and Aliocha Schneider in Chew-Bose’s) smarter in Chew-Bose’s film is that when Cécile starts scheming to break Raymond and Anne up it no longer makes any sense that Elsa and Philippe/Cyril would help her.

As for what happens to Anne, the impact is a lot stronger in Preminger’s film, as Seberg’s voiceover in the present day offers more insight into her interior world and how she’s feeling in the aftermath of her life-changing summer. Like the best remakes, Chew-Bose’s makes different choices and is more interesting for those deviations, but I personally prefer Preminger’s Bonjour Tristesse.

Bonus Features:

While the DVD for Chew-Bose’s film is barebones, Indicator have assembled a nice array of bonus features for Preminger’s film, starting with a commentary by film critics Glenn Kenny and Farran Smith Nehme in which they go over how difficult Preminger was as a director (especially with regards to his treatment of Seberg). In a 2017 interview, Jeremy Burnham, who played one of Cécile’s beaus, brings up how Niven came to Seberg’s defense. Writer and critic Geoff Andrew provides a 22 minute featurette on the film where he appreciates the film’s ambiguity. There’s also an interview with Sagan’s son, Denis Westhoff, where he says it would be nice to see another film adaptation attempted someday and, sure enough, he’s one of the executive producers on Chew-Bose’s film. Sagan is the focus of author Peter Cowle‘s essay in the booklet that comes with this release.

Bonjour Tristesse (1958) is available on region 2 Blu-ray from Indicator. Bonjour Tristesse (2025) is available on DVD from Kino Lorber.