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National Post
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- National Post
Chloë Sevigny talks indie films, new movie Bonjour Tristesse
Article content Over a career spanning 30 years, Chloë Sevigny has defined herself as a champion of independent film. Witness a short list of notable movies: Kids (1995); Boys Don't Cry (1999); The Brown Bunny (2004); Broken Flowers (2005); and Beatriz at Dinner (2017). Article content Article content Her newest, the limited release Bonjour Tristesse, likewise proves that small can be beautiful. From writer-director Durga Chew-Bose, it's based on Françoise Sagan's 1954 novel of the same name. Another film adaptation was released in 1958, starring Deborah Kerr and Jean Seberg. Article content Article content The new movie is set on the French seaside. Teenager Cécile (Lily McInerny), her father (Claes Bang) and his girlfriend (Naïlia Harzoune) are spending languid summer days captured with suitable sun-washed cinematography. Article content But things change when Sevigny's character, longtime family friend Anne, arrives. She's quite literally a buttoned-up fashion designer, wearing a crisp white shirt, pearl earrings and a tidy updo. Feeling threatened, Cécile devises a plan to drive Anne away. But she doesn't expect what happens next. Article content Sevigny spoke to Postmedia about Bonjour Tristesse, her love of independent film, and the idea of joining a blockbuster franchise like Marvel. Article content A: Cécile is growing into womanhood, but she doesn't quite understand it yet. And she's very threatened by this woman coming into her life. I was thinking a lot about my mother and how she would be lovingly critical in the way that she just wants me to have the opportunities that are available to me, to take full advantage of them. How she comes from a different generation, and what she deems as a way of getting something that one would want. So I think it's more interesting, this kind of generational relationship. Article content Q: In this movie, Anne over-parents Cécile. But I remember you in Kids — your character there was very under-parented. How do you think the teenage years then compare to now? Article content A: It's funny when people say that about Jenny from Kids, because I always imagined her as a girl who went to (a private school) and had a really good family. I think it's because you don't see her household, and in New York at that time there were kids from different upbringings coming together. Article content But how things have changed? I imagine social media and all of that is rather challenging. Even for me it's hard, as far as comparing and despairing. I find the immediacy with which we have to respond to people — vis-a-vis texting or emailing or all these other ways we talk — quite stressful. So I think it's harder to just be in the moment. Article content A: They're just the opportunities that have come my way. I'm just looking for distinct voices, original voices, something new. To me this felt like a (Éric) Rohmer film or a (Pedro) Almodóvar film. I felt this was like a foreign film written in the English language, which I don't come across often. Also, this character is something that I haven't played often. I thought Durg was a really interesting new voice in movies, and I just wanted to be there to help support her.
Geek Vibes Nation
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Vibes Nation
‘Bonjour Tristesse' Review – Durga Chew-Bose's Reimagining Of A Thorny Novel Lacks Bite
There is a distinctly timeless quality to Durga Chew-Bose's Bonjour Tristesse, but only just. Near the beginning of the writer-turned-filmmaker's debut, the young Cécile (an excellent Lily McInerny, the Palm Trees and Power Lines standout) is seen holding seashells up to the sunlight to assess their translucency before placing them in an organized pattern on a beach towel, where they sit alongside rocks, shards of coral, and other earthy items that have washed ashore. A few frames on, her father is encouraging her to toss her iPhone into the sea; we had yet to see a cell phone by this point, leaving viewers dangling comfortably in a place without a designated time. Then, later, one character asks another which section of the newspaper they'd like to borrow. No reply comes; is this because we're operating in modern times, where sections of the paper can be accessed via smartphone apps rather than by flipping pages, or more frighteningly, where no one could give a damn about the newspaper whatsoever? The competition between (and within) these setpieces serves as the more enticing element of Chew-Bose's film – a not-so-subtle conflict that poses one's desperation to maintain modernity against their concerted longing for simpler, classic times that we now only see in films and novels – and they help manufacture a complex (albeit uncomplicated) atmosphere in which the movie and its characters can happily exist. Perhaps it should be no surprise, then, that these tableau-focused scenes are the more successful efforts from Chew-Bose than her handling and updated reimagining of the narrative from Françoise Sagan's 1954 novel of the same name, a sensation that Otto Preminger adapted into a thorny triumph of his own in 1958. It's not that Chew-Bose doesn't understand the story, but that her ideal execution of its modern retelling is tripped up by a profound uncertainty regarding what Sagan's text would look like in these times. Fans of Call Me By Your Name – both Andre Aciman's novel from 2007 and Luca Guadagnino's 2017 film adaptation – are likely to feel right at home with Bonjour Tristesse, at least from an aesthetic standpoint, and especially in the beginning stages when the film's more elaborate ideas have yet to rear their heads. Shots of grapefruit slices and swimsuit-clad teens pepper its early frames, with Cécile and Cyril, her boyfriend for the summer, played by Aliocha Schneider from Angela Schanelec's Music, enjoying short, sweet makeout sessions in many of them. Prior to one, she traces her middle name on his back, giving him the opportunity to learn it should he identify the letters that form it; when he can't, she refuses to tell him what he's missed. Cécile operates on the surface with most people, safely wading in the dangerous waters of relationships by remaining in shallow pools rather than venturing too far into unfamiliar depths. The only person who truly knows her ins and outs is Raymond (Claes Bang), her wealthy widower father, whose latest girlfriend, Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune), has joined them for the summer. Elsa believes she understands Cécile, but misses plenty due to her inability to see her as anything beyond the prototypical young woman. It's only after Anne (Chloë Sevigny), her late mother's closest friend, arrives at their summer home that we begin to understand why Elsa's assessment came up short, as more is revealed about Cécile's darker capabilities and urges, as well as the toxic, codependent nature of her relationship with her father. It all makes for one hell of a summer, with the idyllic, thoughtless nature of a family vacation swiftly turning into an extravagant sociological nightmare of manipulation, only sleeker. At least that's what Chew-Bose seems to be going for, a method that affords Bonjour Tristesse the quality of never being uninteresting. Regrettably, it never warrants much interrogation, either. The luscious textures and well-framed photography by the German cinematographer Maximilian Pittner are worth writing home about – who has an appreciation for two shots that place one character in the foreground and one just behind them, unable to see their expressions – but unlike in other European-set melodramas where romantic intrigue and violent impulses go together hand in hand, there's a fundamental imbalance to Chew-Bose's work here, her narrative flowing more like an unspooled yarn of scattered ideas than a literary adaptation where those ideas have already been formed for the filmmaker to then meddle with. As Cyril says while he and Cécile lounge on the rocks after a swim, 'You're so frustrating. It's like you're reckless and careful. Which usually means the recklessness doesn't come naturally.' Cécile's caution manifests most deeply in her fear of getting too close to anyone but Raymond, one of her defining characteristics in every version of Bonjour Tristesse, but in Chew-Bose's adaptation, their connection feels less obsessive than in the tale's previous iterations, and thus toothless by comparison. Sagan's novel partially reached its level of acclaim because of its author's age – she was 18 at the time of writing and detailed intense connections between family members and partners with both ferocity and ire – while Preminger's 1958 film was serene and twisted in equal measure, depending on how deeply you peered. In attempting to split the difference between the severity of Sagan's prose and the composure of Preminger's filmmaking, the spice that would make you devour what Chew-Bose is serving has been left out of the recipe. You see Raymond becoming more fascinated with Anne as her presence in their home lingers, and you see (and hear) Cécile's frustration burgeoning as the attention once reserved for her lands on an older, maternal figure. But threats must be more than meets the eye to be more than something tactile and physical. Stories like Bonjour Tristesse are not unfamiliar – one's mind may wander to Gia Coppola's Somewhere – but the more probing they are, the more willing to bite we may be. As luxurious as Chew-Bose's adaptation is from a visual standpoint, it rarely delves past the beautiful surface it fashions for itself through its undeniable scenery and the beautiful faces it captures. Much like one of Elsa's early observations of Cécile, it's an easy film to look at, but one that makes itself hard to be truly seen. Bonjour Tristesse is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.
New York Times
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Master of Moods Reimagines a French Classic
It was a Thursday night in early May, and Durga Chew-Bose was crossing Sixth Avenue with a serious expression. She was leaving the IFC Center, a movie theater in Greenwich Village where, when she lived in New York, she had gone to see art house films with a crew of other writers and artists she befriended in her 20s. On this warm evening some years later, she had attended a talk following a screening of her directorial debut, an adaptation of the French novel 'Bonjour Tristesse' starring Chloë Sevigny and Lily McInerny. Ms. Chew-Bose, 39, was dressed a bit like one of her characters: meticulously, and in a Parisian brand that discerning viewers may have picked out in her style-conscious take on the classic. But far from the French Riviera, where the film is set, its director was clad in all black, her dark hair tucked into her jacket collar. She held a children's picture book, a gift from a friend to bring home to Montreal, where she lives with her husband, the filmmaker and professor Jesse Noah Klein, and their young son, Fran. 'I wonder,' she said of the panel discussion that had followed the film, 'if it was entertaining enough.' How she came to write and direct this new 'Bonjour Tristesse' isn't so straightforward, though Ms. Chew-Bose, a consummate cinephile, has long had a sense that her working in film was inevitable. Born to immigrant parents from Kolkata and raised in Montreal, she studied French literature and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., graduating in 2009. Afterward, she lived in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Boerum Hill and Crown Heights, falling in with the city's young literati. Among them: Lena Dunham, whom Ms. Chew-Bose reached out to for an interview about one of Ms. Dunham's early films. 'I remember thinking she was unusually elegant for someone in their early 20s,' Ms. Dunham said in an interview. 'In the era of indie sleaze, she always carried herself more like a Joan Didion than a New York scenester,' she added, with 'an inborn maturity and insight that seemed so out of reach for most of us. She had manners, style, restraint — we were all chasing various identities, and hers was totally formed.' Ms. Dunham cast her as an extra in 'Tiny Furniture,' the 2010 indie comedy that jump-started Ms. Dunham's career, in a scene at a gallery — one of just a few other film credits to Ms. Chew-Bose's name before she was asked to reimagine 'Bonjour Tristesse.' But it was Ms. Chew-Bose's writing that had caught the attention of a pair of Toronto film producers, Katie Bird Nolan and Lindsay Tapscott, who in 2017 had her in mind to loosely adapt Françoise Sagan's 1954 novel into a modern-day screenplay. 'When I read Durga's writing, there's a spell you fall under a little bit, and that's kind of what we wanted to happen in the movie,' said Ms. Tapscott, who with Ms. Nolan runs the female-focused production company Babe Nation Films. In particular, they had read Ms. Chew-Bose's buzzy essay collection, 'Too Much and Not the Mood,' which had been published that same year with Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book gathered up Ms. Chew-Bose's writings for small publications like Hazlitt and The Hairpin, where she had become known for enigmatic essays about living alone, her reluctance to correct people when they mishear her first name, and the meaning of an iPhone emoji she refers to as the 'heart museum.' Ms. Chew-Bose knows 'how to make an image have a feeling,' said the writer Haley Mlotek, who worked with her at Ssense, the e-commerce site Ms. Chew-Bose transformed into a venue for literary writing when she became its editor in chief in 2020. This was the sort of treatment Ms. Tapscott and Ms. Nolan wanted for 'Bonjour Tristesse.' But when they reached out to Ms. Chew-Bose about the idea, she hesitated. The novel had already been adapted by Otto Preminger in 1958. Then there was the tricky content: The work is a coming-of-age story that follows the teenage Cécile who in the novel has an easygoing — if erotically charged — relationship with her widower father, who has brought his girlfriend, Elsa, on holiday in the south of France. The trio's carefree dynamic is disrupted when Anne, a friend of Cécile's late mother, arrives on the scene, forcing Cécile to study and keeping her away from her summer boyfriend. Romantic partners are swapped. Age gaps are disregarded. The source material seemed untouchable, and a bit dated. 'But I've learned that hesitation is really exciting,' Ms. Chew-Bose told the audience at the IFC Center that evening, seated beside Ms. Sevigny, who plays Anne, and Ms. McInerny, Cécile. 'It's something you can work with.' Ms. Sevigny, too, said she had been uncertain at first about signing on for 'Bonjour Tristesse.' But after reading Ms. Chew-Bose's writing and speaking with her, she was sold. 'I was just really taken with her as a person,' Ms. Sevigny said in an interview. 'I think people are very drawn to her mind.' When in 2019 Ms. Chew-Bose delivered a rough outline of her screenplay to Ms. Nolan and Ms. Tapscott, it was brimming with the sort of choices that a director might make, they said in an interview. Though they had a sense Ms. Chew-Bose might be a natural choice to direct, they first sent her script to a handful of established directors. One replied that while he liked the script, there didn't seem to be much room for his own creative touch in such a fleshed-out world. 'From Cécile's P.O.V., still lying flat on the beach, lifelessly, we watch as she grabs a handful of sand and lets it run through her fingers in soft, yellow streams, running out like time,' reads a stage direction early in the screenplay. The producers realized that Ms. Chew-Bose was already directing from the page. Why not invite her to do so officially? In 2021, they did, and she agreed. The result is a meticulously crafted world where no detail has been spared — like the fake books she commissioned from her longtime friend, the graphic designer Teddy Blanks, and his wife, the New York Times book critic Molly Young, to serve as her characters' summer reading. Or the vintage bathing suits and trendy accessories chosen by Miyako Bellizzi, the film's costume designer, who roomed with Ms. Chew-Bose leading up to the 30-day shoot in Cassis, France. Over dinner after the IFC screening, Ms. Bellizzi said that people who don't know Ms. Chew-Bose well might not imagine how funny she is: 'We would be on the floor laughing.' The next morning, at the Waverly Diner, Ms. Chew-Bose joked that the restaurant's ambience and crimson booths recalled the final scene of 'The Sopranos.' But she soon turned pensive. The film was now out in theaters, she explained, over a spinach-and-mushroom omelet and gluten-free toast. Anyone could buy a ticket to see it. 'That's obviously impossibly cool to me, as someone who loves movies, but I also feel vulnerable,' she said. Ms. Chew-Bose knows her creative sensibility is 'not for everyone.' The people she imagines enjoying her new film, or her writing, she continued, are readers, in the broad sense. Not bookworms, per se, but people who 'can be alone with their thoughts' and can 'read between lines.' 'Not knowing why something is moving you and being OK to live in that discomfort,' she added. There is intimacy, Ms. Chew-Bose explained, in small touches. 'I think it reveals a lot about people, what they notice,' she said. 'I like specificity. I love people who can experience emotion through detail and not big swings. Although I admire big swings.' Take, for instance, the moment in 'Bonjour Tristesse' when the three women at the center of the film — Cécile, Elsa and Anne — carefully cut, or bite un-self-consciously, into an apple, revealing their personalities, psychological states and feelings of identification with one another. It's art that is similarly attuned to both the mundanity and the romance of everyday life that most resonates with Ms. Chew-Bose. In that final 'Sopranos' scene, for example, she said, as Tony selects Journey's 'Don't Stop Believin'' from a jukebox and other characters file into the diner, what really gets her is that his daughter, Meadow, is 'just trying to parallel park.' Ms. Chew-Bose said she has always been sensitive, her radar finely calibrated. As a girl, she worried that 'maybe I don't understand the big things — big ideas. Maybe I'm having a hard time finding ways to express life, death, loss, joy — and so I need to describe the bread, and then that's a vessel for joy.' Growing up in Canada, she focused on traditional markers of achievement — coursework at her French-immersion school, student council. Her father, Rana Bose, an engineer, writer, poet and playwright, and her mother, Dolores Chew, a professor of history and liberal arts, separated when she was 8, and later divorced. In May 2023, just days before 'Bonjour Tristesse' would begin shooting, Ms. Chew-Bose's father died after a yearslong illness with multiple myeloma. 'He loved watching me stand somewhere with an audience, holding attention,' she recalled. She went on: 'I would have called him right after this,' referring to this conversation. 'Like, 'Baba!' — I would have turned into his daughter again.' Ms. Chew-Bose is already deep into her next film projects, two original screenplays she is developing with Ms. Nolan and Ms. Tapscott. One, 'Dish Trick,' is 'an unlikely found-family story' set in Montreal, she said. The other, 'Soft as It Began,' is about the making of a film, and will be shot partly on location in Europe. She plans to direct both. She said she anticipated the challenges that she now knows firsthand can come with filmmaking. No matter. 'One thing I learned in making this movie,' she said, 'is I've got to make things.' Suddenly, with a flourish that Ms. Chew-Bose herself might have dreamed up, 'Don't Stop Believin'' came on over the restaurant speaker system. She put down her fork and raised her index finger in excitement, as a grin lit up her face.
