Chloë Sevigny and ​​Durga Chew-Bose on Reimagining ‘Bonjour Tristesse’

In François Sagan’s novel Bonjour Tristesse, 17-year-old Cécile passes languid days in the French Mediterranean with her father, Raymond, an unrepentant playboy whose new girlfriend is nearly the same age as Cécile. Their lackadaisical lifestyle is soon upended by Anne, a prudent Parisian designer and close friend of Cécile’s late mother, whose arrival sets off a series of calamities that end in death. Sagan’s novel was an instant success when it was first published in 1954 and the glamorous tragedy has haunted and inspired generations of readers since. 

Durga Chew-Bose’s film adaptation faithfully manifests the novel’s famed chic. Starring Chloë Sevigny in the captivating role of Anne, the film reconstructs Sagan’s endless summer with precision and poise, attuning viewers to the ways the women in the story simultaneously admire and provoke one another. 

Featuring set decorations by François-Renaud Labarthe (the preferred production designer of Olivier Assayas) and outfits by cult-favorite costume designer Miyako Bellizzi, Chew-Bose’s Bonjour Tristesse is also a masterclass in mise-en-scene — the perfectly selected objects, laid out just so.

Chew-Bose, who was previously editor-in-chief of SSENSE before stepping behind the camera, knows how to use style in service of a deeper story. In the following conversation, she and Sevigny reflect on the obsessions and influences they brought to the film. 

What made you want to adapt this novel now?

DURGA CHEW-BOSE It’s close to 10 years now since my producers [Lindsay Tapscott and Katie Bird Nolan] reached out to me to come on board as the screenwriter. They had read my book of essays, Too Much and Not the Mood, they cold-emailed me and said they were shopping rights for the adaptation, but Éditions Julliard, which was Francois Sagan’s publisher, said that if you can attach a writer, we can start the conversation. 

Many people were trying to get the rights to it, so it was sort of competitive for them. They were really persistent, they kept coming back even though I wasn’t really responsive, mostly because I wasn’t sure what they saw. One thing I have learned in this process is that so much of this is just about relationships and getting to know people and how they work. I really love working with Lindsay and Katie, they have a lot of grit. 

Chloë, were you familiar with the story before it was brought to you? 

CHLOË SEVIGNY No, I’m embarrassed to say I hadn’t read the book or seen the film, and so my introduction was really through Durga’s writing on it. I was really drawn into the script and her voice. And, you know, I had a child recently and so committing to work on films now is a bigger leap, it’s time out of my life with my young child. I feel like I’m a lot more discerning with the roles I take, but I recognize something in Durga’s writing. We had a few conversations and I got a lot out of the way that she spoke about cinema. Even though it was her first film, I really got what she was hoping to attempt. I found that very exciting. I’ve always been drawn to first-time filmmakers and I was moved by what she wanted to say with the movie. But, to your original question, I guess I got cast pretty late in the process. I don’t know how many months out you were from shooting.

DCB Everything was kind of happening simultaneously. But with you in particular, I don’t even know if you know this, but from an outline stage, Katie and Lindsay were like, ‘I see Chloë as Anne.’ And so I quickly read all these profiles of you that I hadn’t read before. And I remember one of them captured your childhood in Connecticut, a New York Times one. And I remembered adding details from one about you sitting under–

CS –the forsythia!

DCB Yeah, there’s a version of the script with a flashback where Anne’s remembering and that bush is in it. I was just copying those details down, because that’s the way that I like to write. I think that’s why Katie and Lindsay are such great creative producers, because they were just feeding me their inspiration. Even though we’d never seen you in a role like this before, I don’t really know what it was but she felt there was something about my Anne that she felt she saw in you.

Anne is a fascinating and very complex character, especially when seen through Cécile’s eyes. She’s someone who balances desire and authority. Did you identify with her as you worked on the role?

CS I think I was drawing more on women my age who have committed themselves to their art or their craft and either didn’t meet the right person to have a child with or decided they didn’t want to do it on their own. I was thinking about women also, women I know, who have had men leave them for younger girls. Anne was kind of drawing on the emotions that I’ve seen run through these women who are in my life. 

She’s a fashion designer, and there are specific women I know, like Susan Cianciolo, who approach fashion more like an artist than a designer. I was thinking about Bernadette Corporation when Anne’s talking about ‘how all we thought about was fashion.’ That’s not trite! To these people, it’s important, and I like the fact that Durga also took that seriously with her costume design. The clothes are a large part of the movie and people are often dismissive of it because it’s feminine or it’s frivolous or whatever. But I think clothing and costumes are very important to a lot of people. So I wanted to approach it the way I thought that people like Bernadette Corporation and Susan approach their art and life. Their whole lives are like art, you know, and that puts them kind of on display.

What was it like working with costume designer Miyako Bellizzi on this project, and what conversations did you have about the look you were going for?

DCB I was familiar with Miyako’s work before we started working together. So we began with a series of conversations about the script, and I think she hadn’t done anything like this before, so it was attractive to her. I think she was perceived for a while as doing very ‘New York’ kind of movies. Bonjour Tristesse isn’t a period film, but a lot of choices were made that are often in period films, prioritizing costumes [and] actually budgeting for it. And so I think that excited her, too. And then, lastly, that there were going to be so many women on set. I know she said that really was pleasing for her. For me, the collaboration was really just an education. I trusted her a lot, and I learned a lot from her about editing down and thinking big and then just letting go. We had a long lead-up of conversations, which I found really helpful. I hope that going forward, when I make more films, it will be the case where you get a lot of time just getting to know people, and not in a transactional way. I’m sure Chloë had her own experience, too, working with her. 

CS I did, I mean, I trusted her implicitly and I adore her work and her sense of taste. She has this incredible eye. But I was wearing a lot of silhouettes that I don’t normally wear in life, and I was in a place in my body where I wasn’t the most happy, after the baby. So that was kind of a challenge for me. But I mean, part of the joy of being an actor is trying new things and pushing yourself into places that make you uncomfortable. Each of the characters had this very distinct style, and their clothes embodied who they were in so many ways. That was fun to explore with somebody who I really trusted. Often, I am kind of suspicious of costume designers because I think that I, you know, have better taste than them. [Laughs]

I think that’s a reasonable assumption. 

DCB You’ve probably been on their mood boards for other projects! Like, you’re their inspiration.

CS But I also love that Miyako really loves vintage and, for me, I love being in an item that’s been worn. A lot of costume designers want multiples. So they want to get new stuff. And that becomes something off the rack, whereas she is like, ‘Let’s just find the most beautiful, worn dress or shirt’ or whatever it is. That mutual love of the worn object made me feel safe. 

When you were imagining the look of the film, did you feel it was in conversation with the Otto Preminger version? I just rewatched it and the design of all of those Givenchy costumes is such an integral part of the movie. 

DCB I think Miyako had watched the film more recently than I had. I’d seen it at Film Forum a couple years before I started writing the script. Like Chloë was saying, Miyako spent a lot of time in these basement warehouses in Paris finding one-off vintage pieces, which are quite scary to fall in love with when you’re making a film because, yeah, sometimes you do need multiples and we didn’t have any for most things. But there was so much inspiration in her finding them, and then building shots around them after a fitting. That’s another way in which things all came together at once. 

It’s rare to see a movie where the ambitions of women shape so much of the action.

DCB It’s funny you say that it’s rare—and it is rare—but it’s also kind of all I know. It’s all the women I know, the worlds that I know and the women who I admire and have guided me. One of the lines that I love comes from Marguerite Duras’s The Lover at a part in the book where she’s remembering a certain woman and she says that her memories of men are never as illuminated as her memories of women. And I feel the same way. Women really inspire me; even something that could be perceived as a negligible detail of their life, I can think about forever. I get fixated, obsessed. And so, yeah, it’s rare, but what we see on screen is not proportionate to how the people I know live their lives.

I love your essay on ‘Summer Pictures’ as a genre of cinema, and the idea of cinema as a cool respite from the heat. Did you set out to make a summer picture in that vein?

DCB That’s funny, I never thought about it that way. But yeah, I love being outside, but I really love being inside in the summer in a movie theater. That’s kind of how I grew up. Chloë, you often describe your childhood climbing trees and being barefoot and outside, which I loved hearing about because it’s so different to mine. And I wonder how different of a person I would be if I was just barefoot more when I was younger. 

But I spend a lot of time at the movies, and when I was living in New York, it’s kind of how I planned every day. Often I would go in completely blind. I didn’t really read about what I was going to see. So much was new to me and very known to others, and I kind of liked that. I liked the culture. I remember, even as recently as 10 years ago, it felt like people were [more] comfortable going to films that they didn’t know much about.

CS If I had to smell one more tuna sandwich in MoMA… 

DCB Are you serious?

CS In the ’90s, when I first moved to New York, I was always going to an afternoon screening at the MoMA and there’d be all these little cinephiles in there with their tuna fish sandwiches… Anyway, I don’t want to interrupt your train of thought, but it brought me back.

DCB No, that’s so funny. Food and movies is a whole interesting topic of its own. But yeah, people really live, like live, in movie theaters. I don’t know if that’s still the case. I don’t think I intentionally set out to add to that theme of summer films, but it is definitely a genre that I love. I love being in a dark theater and seeing blue water. I think that’s like one of the truest forms of escape for myself. To add to that is really exciting, especially for my first film. But I don’t plan things really, I don’t have five-year plans. Maybe I should, but I just never have.

What are you reading lately? Where are you finding inspiration today?

DCB Actually, one book I gave Chloë when we wrapped was Eleanor Coppola’s Notes. It’s about the making of Apocalypse Now, but what I liked about the diary was it was also just about motherhood and family and having to travel and make art and support a partner and having two artists in a home, what that looks like. And I don’t know, it’s messy. I feel like that level of vulnerability makes making art and sacrifices that come with it feel less scary. And obviously she passed away last year. So I still look at it regularly, but I had it on set with me and I love her for that. I love that book. 

CS I recently was spending time with Christine Vachon. She’s someone that’s been consistent for me in my life and my career. Having been in the business now for like 30 years, and having already built and kind of established myself as this one thing, I sometimes ask myself: How do I carry on? And I think she sets a really good example of that. She has always been kind of a North star for me. 

Bonjour Tristesse opens in U.S. cinemas today, with a French release date to be announced soon.