MOVIES AT LA PLAZA — “BONJOUR TRISTESSE”: Sadly boring

Movie Review by Sergio Martínez

It is said that when it comes to evaluating the quality of films, the criteria of three different judges are applied: the viewers, the critics, and the distributors. Needless to say, on many occasions, the evaluations that arise from them are very contradictory.

As a critic, I had the opportunity to see Bonjour Tristesse at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2024, and in the usual exchanges at the end of the screening for the media, everyone I spoke to agreed on the tedium that this film had produced in us.

Paradoxically, after almost a year, this film is now being presented on Montreal screens and, according to what has been reported by its publicists, also in U.S. theatres. What are the distributors or exhibitors thinking? Has the fact that the film was directed by a Canadian woman been an excuse? Or has there been a good work of contacts and influences here? I point this out because at the same festival we had the opportunity to see, for example, The Mother and the Bear, set in Winnipeg, directed by the Canadian of Korean origin Johnny Ma, or in terms of international cinema, a work of excellent quality such as Pedro Paramo (by director Rodrigo Prieto) or, if we want to talk about U.S. cinema, the very pleasant comedy-thriller Riff Raff by director Dino Montiel. None of these films has been programmed to be released in Montreal or other Canadian cities, which speaks to the narrow criteria of those who select the films that will later be shown in theatres.

On the other hand, and even with good pu
blicity and, we imagine, with sound financial backing, this production, which has no significant artistic merits, is being shown, and about which we reproduce here the critical appraisal it deserved when it was shown at TIFF.  And we dare to bet that it won't last long in theatres, viewers are not so masochistic.

Bonjour Tristesse—Directed by Durga Chew-Bose (Co-Production Canada, Germany)

The eponymous novel on which this film is based was a bestseller in the 1950s. Françoise Sagan, the author, wrote it when she was 18. The story, centred on the life of Cécile (Lily McInerny) a teenager whose mother has died, and who is vacationing on the coast with her father, Raymond (Claes Bang) and his girlfriend Elsa (Nailia Harzoune), attempted to portray the existential angst of a youth then besieged by the emptiness of life in a post-war France enjoying a growing posterity, while the specter of the Cold War seemed to overshadow their future. In this film, director Durga Chew-Bosse, we don't know if intentionally, introduces incongruous elements: the fashion, especially the actresses' swimsuits and the models of the cars make it clear that this is the period in which the story was written—the 1950s—yet, incoherently, there are also cell phones in the scene, which otherwise have no use in the story. A simple inconsistency and a lack of knowledge of the director? A deliberate resource, although without a clear objective? Many scenes are extremely tedious: how often do we want to see the protagonists swimming in the sea or sunbathing on the beach? In short, a remake of a novel whose subject matter is otherwise dated, and the director fails in her attempt, if she had one, to make the story relevant again.

We do not recommend this film because it is extremely dull, a judgment perhaps too categorical and one we rarely use, which fits this one very well.

Running time: 110 min.