Bonjour Tristesse Blu-ray Review
Au revoir, functional family.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, November 5, 2012
Suddenly Alfred Hitchcock's fascination with cool blonde women has become all the rage. HBO's
The Girl traced
Hitch's quasi-masochistic relationship with Tippi Hedren and the new theatrical outing
Hitchcock deals (at least
tangentially) with Hitch's somewhat more "normal" interactions with Janet Leigh during the filming of
Psycho.
But there was another iconic director who had his own flirtation with obsession with a blonde actress. It may not have
been as
long of an obsession as Hitch's evidently was (which, let's face it, went on for decades and focused on
any number of actresses), and it may not have spilled into this director's personal life the way that Hitch's did, but it is
still an object lesson in a director perhaps listening more to his heart (or some other organ) than his head. Otto
Preminger "discovered" Jean Seberg during a hugely publicized event to cast the leading role in Preminger's film of
George Bernard Shaw's
Saint Joan. Seberg's performance in that film was roundly disparaged and perhaps set
the actress off on a course of bouts with depression that would ultimately at least contribute to her suicide some years
later. But Preminger wasn't about to be swayed by any mere critics' comments (and frankly who can blame him?), and
immediately cast Seberg again in a pivotal role in his follow up to
Saint Joan, 1958's
Bonjour Tristesse.
The critics were at least a little kinder to Seberg this time out, though it really wasn't until she emigrated to France and
appeared in Jean-Luc Godard's
Breathless (Ŕ Bout de Souffle) that she was finally recognized to be more than just another (extremely)
pretty face. Looking back on Seberg's early work now, I for one think the critical analyses should be reversed. Her
naďve and awkward approach as Joan of Arc seems rather well suited to the role of a young peasant girl who suddenly
finds herself to be a sort of female Messiah, while her overarch (and
way over-enunciated) take as a spoiled
teenager in
Bonjour Tristesse often comes off as extremely mannered and unnatural. Preminger no doubt
probably
still couldn't care less what I or anyone thinks, despite the fact that the director shuffled off this mortal
coil some time ago.
Françoise Sagan became an international celebrity when she was still a teenager and her first novel
Bonjour
Tristesse took the world by storm, selling several million copies and making her the toast of several towns. Sagan
tended to write about disaffected European youth—think
Rebel Without a Cause, only with a lot more money
and
better vocabularies, and that's certainly the case with
Bonjour Tristesse, a reminiscence of sorts by Cécile,
played
in the film version by Jean Seberg. Cécile is a spoiled and pampered young teen who lives with her cad of a father,
Raymond (David Niven), an inveterate playboy who drifts from meaningless affair to meaningless affair, with Cécile
watching, disaffected, from the sidelines.
Things change dramatically when Anne (Deborah Kerr) shows up at the family's gorgeous French Riviera estate one
sunny day. Anne had been a friend of Cécile's late mother and her arrival, which was precipitated by a probably "just
being polite" invitation from Raymond, seems to shock—albeit momentarily—him into some semblance of decency. Anne
is intelligent, refined, a
lady, and even Cécile seems to realize there's something more in life than just being a
kept floozy. However, once Raymond leaves Else (Mylčne Demongeot), his girlfriend of the moment, for a more
substantial relationship with Anne, Cécile suddenly finds her entire lifestyle and worldview being threatened, and she
sets out to break the two up, with disastrous results.
There's a Freudian subtext (some might argue
text) to
Bonjour Tristesse that is perfectly in keeping with
the equally Freudian concept of a director being obsessed with a young blonde. In the case of the film, it's the
obviously unhealthy relationship between Cécile and Raymond, one that borders on a sort of platonic incest, if such a
thing is possible. The two are almost like old lovers who have forsaken physical intimacy but are intertwined in every
other conceivable way. Preminger attempts to sugarcoat this disturbing fact with luscious photography (this is in many
ways his most beautiful looking film), but there's a moral decrepitude at the heart of
Bonjour Tristesse that eats
away at its very dramatic soul, making the result unsettling and distasteful.
Preminger obviously believed (for better or worse) in Seberg, and truth be told, she does reasonably well in a difficult
role here. The major problem is her affected speech, especially in her voiceovers (the film utilizes a sort of
Strange
Interlude conceit where Cécile will say one thing to a character on screen and then we get her
real
thoughts via narration). Her weirdly crisp pronunciations (listen to those "t"'s!) are simply too floridly theatrical and
completely at odds with the supposed intimate character of the film. Much, much better are Niven and Kerr, both of
whom would receive Oscar nominations that year for
Separate Tables, with Niven winning Best Actor. Kerr in
fact is near perfection as Anne, especially in the climactic scene (where Seberg also does incredibly well). For this
sequence alone
Bonjour Tristesse is probably worth checking out. It's a stunningly staged and filmed moment
and it offers some unvarnished and devastating emoting from Kerr that is hard to forget.
Scenarist Arthur Laurents seemed to have an easier time with it as a playwright and musical book writer (he wrote the
books for two of the most iconic musicals of all time,
West Side Story and
Gypsy) than he ever did as a
screenplay author, and his attempt to make some of the more objectionable elements of Sagan's novel into a
mainstream "entertainment" leave the film teetering precariously between melodrama and, frankly, camp at times. That
is at least partially overcome by Preminger's wise decision to shoot a lot of this film on location. The sheer
sensuousness of cinematographer's Georges Périnal's work is visceral, though Preminger's perhaps too arty decision to
shoot the "contemporary" Parisian bookends in black and white and the main flashback in color plays too much like a
turgid reboot of
The Wizard of Oz's similar conceit.
Bonjour Tristesse has built up a rather formidable cult following through the years, and in fact one of the pull
quotes Twilight Time has included on the insert lauds the film as "arguably Preminger's masterpiece". I think any
reasonable person offering an overview of Preminger's career which includes
Anatomy of a Murder or
Laura would have a
fairly easy time winning that argument, but when thrust up against the camp-tastic
Otto Preminger Collection also coming out
this same week, maybe it
is time to reassess
Bonjour Tristesse. At the very least that final climactic
moment in the woods between Cécile and Anne is a showstopper that certainly ranks among the best things Preminger
ever did.
