Review: 'Bonjour Tristesse' is a luscious summertime drama, showing a 19-year-old's heartbreaking view of love and jealousy

The quietly brooding protagonist of the darkly romantic drama “Bonjour Tristesse” is — like author Françoise Sagan, who wrote the 1954 novel being adapted here — a 19-year-old woman. And writer-director Durga Chew-Bose shows, in sumptuous detail, why a woman that young isn’t the most reliable judge of emotional states, including her own.

Lily McInerny, a young actor to watch, plays Cécile, who’s enjoying a summer vacation at a seaside French villa with her father, Raymond (Claes Bang), and Raymond’s current girlfriend, Elsa (Nailia Harzoune), a vivacious dancer. Cécile’s mother died several years ago, and both Cécile and Raymond have felt the void in their lives ever since.

Raymond is an indulgent father, letting Cécile do pretty much anything she wants to do on this vacation. That includes neglecting her school work ahead of fall exams, and not interfering as Cécile enjoys her first sexual relationship, with Cyril (Aliocha Schneider), who’s about 22 and the son of their neighbor and friend, Nathalie (Nathalie Richard).

A couple weeks into this vacation, Raymond announces that they’ll be getting a visitor: Anne (Chloë Sevigny), a famous fashion designer and an old friend of Cécile’s mother from their college days. At first, Cécile is a little intimidated by Anne, who’s very composed and tough to read. It doesn’t take long for Cécile to become fascinated by Anne, who shows Cécile her sketchbook and shows an interest in Cécile’s creative side.

Then, outside a fancy party, Cécile learns a secret: That Anne and Raymond have fallen in love — or possibly fallen back in love, after decades apart. Soon Elsa is packing her bag, and Raymond is announcing that he and Anne are engaged. Cécile decides she doesn’t like this, and works out a plot to stop the wedding from happening — and the consequences of that decision fill the rest of this drama.

Chew-Bose makes an assured debut as writer and director, setting a languid pace that matches the rhythms of a romantic summer vacation, where things play out slowly and sometimes suddenly and unexpectedly all at once. This trajectory gives us moments where we just luxuriate on the rocky shore with Cécile and Cyril, or lounge in the villa with Raymond and Elsa, or sip wine on the patio with Raymond and Anne. Don’t mistake those moments as quiet or dull, because there’s so much emotion bubbling just under the surface.

And, like I said before, keep your eyes on McInerny, who’s stunning as the mercurial young Cécile. “Bonjour Tristesse” is only McInerny’s second movie — the first was the 2022 Sundance Film Festival drama “Palm Trees and Power Lines,” where she played a teen being groomed by a much older man — and she perfectly embodies the unbridled confidence and inner doubts of a teen who thinks they know everything and finds out tragically that they don’t. 

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‘Bonjour Tristesse’

★★★

Opens Friday, May 2, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas. Rated R for some sexuality. Running time: 110 minutes; in English and in French with subtitles.