Hello Goodbye

Bonjour, Tristesse was an Otto Preminger film from 1958 that was inspired by a book of the same name. It was being shown at a special screening of Hollywood classics at the TIFF Bell Lightbox Tuesday night. At first glance, the film had a conventional Hollywood feel for movies of that era: the fast banter, the mid-Atlantic accent, and the slight stagey acting when viewed with modern eyes. But the story was a little darker.

17-year-old Cecile (Jean Seberg) spends care-free days on the French Riviera with her libertine and louche father Raymond (David Niven) and his latest young conquest Elsa (Mylene Demongeot). She is a bit infatuated with him, and certainly his playboy lifestyle. Into their lives Anne (Deborah Kerr), an old friend of Raymond, enters. At first, Cecile was happy to have a new mother figure in her life, but she became increasingly rebellious as Anne tries to introduce structure into the young girl's life like studying and school. In the aftermath of a tragedy, father and daughter spend their days in Paris in a funk of ennui and wearied sadness.

Godard had declared this film a spiritual ancestor to the black-and-white Breathless, and no wonder as they both revolve around Jean Seberg and an idealized French identity. I thought Seberg was captivating in the latter at the age of 23. But at 18 and filmed in colour, she was painfully luminous in Tristesse. The rest of the movie talent on display was prodigious, and she was less skillful acting wise, but her physical beauty and delicate innocence outshone everyone else when she was onscreen. It's a beauty not seen in modern Hollywood. Equally part of an Edenic past were the sun-drenched seascape of the French Riviera and the bygone 60s of Paris.