The Finer Things:
An Interview with Durga Chew-Bose (Bonjour Tristesse)
By Saffron Maeve
In her directorial debut, Bonjour Tristesse, Montreal-based writer Durga Chew-Bose renews the once-scandalizing 1954 novella by Françoise Sagan with mesmeric singularity. In a villa along the French Riviera, 18-year-old Cécile (Lily McInerny) and her father, Raymond (Claes Bang), a womanizing widower, spend their days luxuriating in the summer heat alongside Raymond’s lover du jour Elsa (Nailia Harzoune). The trio—or duo when Cécile is off on her own fling with neighboring Cyril (Aliocha Schneider)—engage in the analogue pleasures of their bourgeois setting; the days pass gently, with swimming, sunbathing, card playing, and reading aloud.
When Raymond invites Anne (Chloë Sevigny), a friend from his youth who’s now a lauded fashion designer in Paris, Cécile begins to feel constraints on her breezy way of life. Anne is tight-laced but warm and seems to become one with the landscape as if a permanent fixture, a quality which Cécile quickly resents and seeks to correct. There’s a delicious spaciousness to the film, which has all the sybaritic trimmings of a coastal summer: sun-dappled skin, chalky beach expanses, fresh fruit on the veranda, a perpetual breeze…
Sagan penned her ode to girlish discontent at age 18, and it was first adapted in 1958 by Otto Preminger, starring Jean Seberg, David Niven, and Deborah Kerr in the respective roles as Cécile, Raymond, and Anne. Where Preminger’s version was exactingly “on time” with the book’s release, Chew-Bose’s film plays with the timelessness and fluidity of these literary figures within a wider cinematic stream. (Jean-Luc Godard famously considered Seberg’s character in Breathless [1960] a continuation of her Cécile two years prior.)
Ahead of the film’s presentation at MoMI’s First Look 2025, Chew-Bose and I met at her Toronto hotel, where we discussed modes of adaptation, writerly obstruction, familiarity versus nostalgia, and the pleasures of costuming.
Reverse Shot: Tell me a bit about your relationship to Sagan’s source text. When did you first read it, and at what point did you want to adapt it?
Durga Chew-Bose: I’d read it in my teenage years but have seen the Otto Preminger version much more recently than that. Film Forum was showing it at some point when I was still living in New York, and I went with a friend and was just mesmerized. A few years later, I was contacted by my producers [Lindsay Tapscott and Katie Bird Nolan] to see if I had any interest in adapting it. Because it wasn’t a novel that held a very precious place for me in terms of my own coming of age or girlhood, I was hesitant at first. They were extremely persistent and had a vision for the version of Bonjour Tristesse they wanted out in the world. I trusted that they felt passionately about matching me to the book, so I agreed to come on board as just the screenwriter at first.
RS: When you revisited it, did a particular moment jump out at you that you particularly wanted to adapt?
DCB: Definitely. I was reading it with my antennae looking for a way in visually. I’m a very visual writer and not a very plot-based person, so I needed to start with finding the first image [in the film]. I bookmarked any image that spoke to me, even if it made no sense why or was a negligible scene, like something out of my control that I should just succumb to, and it will hopefully tell me why it’s important later. The first line of the film is not the first page of the book, but a scene on the beach when [Cécile] looks like a washed-up fish and [Cyril] remarks that she looks dead. I knew that was the opening shot.
RS: In what ways did your background as a writer permeate your filmmaking practice, or perhaps obscure it?
DCB: I’ll start with the latter. I think my writer's brain and instincts often get in the way because they exist separate from performance and what actors are doing, which is in feeling and body—but I also resist the idea that this is a binary and they can’t exist in the same world. I want the movies I make to feel familiar but a bit elsewhere at the same time. I’m not interested in relatability, so there’s a distancing that my writing does, I think, in terms of the character’s emotions. It’s not exactly how people talk, but as an audience member, you’re in this mix of an “elevated” world that cannot be real and then an inner voice that is also not what people say aloud. It creates a kind of intimacy between the film and the audience because there’s a strangeness that lasts long after the viewing is done. So, in that way, I think sometimes my writing gets in the way.
I wrote a pretty unorthodox script that had camera movements and production design details, even though I’d never even been to Cassis in the South of France where we shot. I just needed to envision every nook and cranny of this world. As a writer, I just imagined compulsively on the page.
RS: How frequently, if at all, did you look to Otto Preminger’s version as a reference point?
DCB: I never watched it after coming on board to adapt it, not for fear of emulating it too much or being under its influence, but it just didn’t interest me. I trusted having seen it once that my subconscious was going to allow it to seep in in ways that are out of my control. But I really do feel—and maybe other directors feel this way about adaptation—that our version of Bonjour Tristesse is like a stream that we’re all in. Françoise’s writing, Preminger’s version, Jean Seberg’s Cécile, Lily’s Cécile, we’re all kind of in the same water. I don’t feel that ours is the “contemporary” version, it’s just an even exchange. A flow, the tide coming in and out…
RS: That’s funny, I’ve been thinking a lot about positive contamination when it comes to adaptations, or the inverse possibility of source texts not being in conversation with one another. I want to hear more about how you cast Lily [McInerny] and Chloë [Sevigny].
DCB: Funnily enough, very early in the writing process, I had committed to an outline for my producers, just to show them my vision for the project before scripting it. Reading the outline, one of my producers went, “gut instinct, Anne feels like Chloë Sevigny.” It’s been a mode for us as a team of filmmakers to follow our instincts from an early stage. I had also read this profile in The New York Times by the journalist Amanda Fortini that focused on Chloë’s childhood in Darien, Connecticut, and there was this whole backstory I was building in the original script of who Anne was. Chloë’s personal life was never on the page, but it was really helpful. She’s also never done a role like this before, so there was an aspirational quality for me as a director to give an actor the opportunity to surprise themselves and others. I think the element of surprise is the last thing we have left.
I actually knew Lily many years prior. When I was living in New York, I would watch her and her brother when their parents went out to a play. So, I knew her as a very cool New York kid who definitely didn’t need anyone in their house watching them. And, again, instinct—she has a face, and this feral quality to her that I find really exciting to watch. There was also this meta thing where she just tapped into some of the natural dynamic of her scene partner being Chloë Sevigny.
RS: Something I love about this adaptation is that it doesn’t try to conquer its own sense of restlessness—it’s propelled by a particular kind of languor. What were sites of inspiration for you when conceiving the film?
DCB: [Cinematographer] Maximilian Pitner and I had a lot of conversations about the photographer Luigi Ghirri. He really inspired us in his mastering of the color blue, this sort of faded, not super rich blue, and a plainness of location that we found evocative. Conversely, we looked at darkness, very practically, because the homes in the South of France often have the curtains drawn to not let in too much sunlight or overheat the interiors. So, these dark, monastic, cooler interiors—then painters like Félix Vallotton, whom we modeled one of our dinner scenes off of. I didn’t want a clear reference point, but for everyone to look like they’re floating in dark space at the dinner table. Of course, we were also inspired by oil paintings that would have that intense contrast.
Max and I had what felt like a movie club leading up to filming, not in order to build what our movie was going to look like, but more building what our secret language was going to be on set. While filming, we would say, “Oh, think of the shot from Birth [2004],” but only he and I knew what we were talking about. A lot of it was just watching movies and having this bank of ideas, like Claire Denis’s Chocolat [1988]—I’d described in the script that the white rocks [by the beach] should feel like a lunar landscape, like she’s climbing up the moon, and we had a shot from that film which we used as a reference.
RS: I’m also smitten with all the clothes, especially in the opening where there’s this symbiotic flow of water and fabrics… How did you and Miyako Bellizzi conceive of the costume design? What was on the figurative mood board?
DCB: It was completely pleasurable because she’s such an artist and such an archive. We had to consider things practically, like a lot of sitting and talking in the film, so certain necklines or high-waisted skirts might not be the most comfortable or flattering silhouette. I learned a lot from Miyako because she asked questions about the camera position or time of day we were shooting at—she was thinking about how the clothes move as an extension of the character without distracting from them. She’s also someone who believes the simplest shirt is the best one, so that was fun in terms of building Cécile’s character. Plus, Lily loves to play dress-up.
We wanted to make a movie that felt romantic and timeless. We both knew that with small independent films, costumes aren’t always a priority for very legitimate reasons. But we love an Edith Head or Grace Kelly moment, and spoke in this romantic, outsized way where wonder can be your guide, without only thinking about the bottom line. We worked closely with our friend Cynthia Merhej, a Lebanese designer based in Paris, who designed dresses for Anne’s collection. There were so many artists building this world with me and costuming was a huge part of that.
RS: This might be overly specific, but I’m curious about the design dossier that Anne has in the film. Who actually did those sketches?
DCB: We actually asked Cynthia to send us her sketches, then we built a book where the production design team added more flourishes and color and mess to it. I love this question because so much of making the film was just continuing the thread… if we’re going to ask a friend to design the dresses, then it should also be her sketches!
RS: There’s a sense that these characters know each other impossibly well or are nearly always legible. How much of this is pulled from your own relationship dynamics?
DCB: If I was in a writing rut or trying to figure my way out of a scene, I would think about some of the women I know who have a certain kind of attitude or way of perceiving the world, and what they could say that would be both biting and warm. I tend to have a lot of women in my life who have those extremes and that became a wellspring for me. Something I discussed with Claes [Bang] was how important father-daughter relationships are to me personally. I drew a lot from father-daughter films—Paper Moon (1973), Contact (1997)—and honestly felt giddy that I was going to be contributing to that world.
RS: Do you situate yourself in any of these characters?
DCB: I feel a lot of warmth and love for Anne. I feel both protective of and frustrated by Cécile, but I know she’s going to be okay. I also have a very huge attachment to Natalie; she’s a character that’s not really in the book, whom I wanted to give some pretty major runway in this adaptation. I love films where there’s a character who just helicopters in, has a long set piece, affects three people in the audience, and then returns at a pivotal moment just when you think they’re not going to come back. Natalie was, in some ways, my ode to loving movies. Elsa was probably the biggest departure from the book. She has this impossible coolness that I’ve admired in women in my life, and a preternatural intelligence for how the world works. Cyril, too, this charming summer love who negs Cécile, but also challenges her by saying boyish things that are frustratingly true. I feel like we all have those people from our past who saw us before anyone else did, like a human friendship bracelet. I have a lot of love for the characters, I think because all of them have a part of me.
RS: Now is also a time of cell phone-averse indie cinema. How did you choreograph Cecile’s smartphone usage in a way that doesn’t disrupt the sort of timelessness you seem to be going for?
DCB: The phone was a tricky one because I think I didn’t want to be an aesthete saying phones are ugly, therefore they can’t be in this movie and everything needs to be, like, a rotary phone. Personally, as an audience member, I don’t trust the film then. But I also feel we wrote a character who doesn’t hang out with a lot of young people and isn’t posting on social media or documenting her day. Lily and I would have conversations about [Cécile] in nature, climbing trees and collecting shells. There’s a gatherer quality to her, and her voyeurism isn’t online—it’s watching adults. We built this into the character in order to “earn” it visually, but obviously she would have a phone to take selfies or listen to music or to compulsively check once she was plotting. It’s one of those decisions that you just have to go with because once you start overthinking, the phone becomes this aesthetic choice. There was going to be a screen at some point, we just had to design it.
RS: I’ve seen many writers attribute a kind of nostalgia to your film, but I read this more as wistfulness.
DCB: Some peoples’ reactions, if I’m interpreting them correctly, are that movies like this don’t get made anymore. I think the sheer fact that it exists confuses people into thinking what they’re feeling is nostalgia. We tried to avoid topicality in some ways, since people yearn for that now and expect it from film. Because we tried to detour whenever that feeling was there, we just didn’t always go to the obvious place, and maybe that’s why people find it a bit nostalgic.
I also think summer movies make people feel nostalgic—bathing suits, smoking, a certain bourgeoisie… We wanted to create a sort of alchemy between the moment someone feels things are familiar, where we then go a little left. This was in all aspects like the costume design, music choices, or even choosing the “wrong” take. Working with my editor, I liked the offish version of the line reading because if it’s a little off or wrong, it’s going to last forever.
Top: photo by Saffron Maeve.
