Drew Burnett Gregory is back at TIFF, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for her coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond.
If I may begin my review of a French literary adaptation with some musings on brat summer.
Brat is an album about being a woman, about comparing oneself to other women, about mirroring other women and resenting other women and — whether sexual or not — desiring other women. At a time when out queer women are dominating the music industry, I feel like we now have permission to analyze the queerness of straight musicians anew. We can bypass our projections or speculations and focus instead on the gaze of their art.
Bi-vibes-but-not-bi Charli xcx is obsessed with women. Olivia Rodrigo is obsessed with women. Sabrina Carpenter is so obsessed with women her song about that obsession has a music video where she makes out with one of them. This isn’t a new perspective — see Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” for a decades-old example. Straight women have long given as much thought to their boyfriends’ exes as their boyfriends; analyzed the bodies, the eroticism, of women more than the men they fuck; formed closer bonds with female friends than male lovers.
In Françoise Sagan’s novel Bonjour Tristesse, the central relationship appears to be between teenage girl Cécile and her father Raymond. But through the lens of Durga Chew-Bose’s phenomenal new adaptation a deeper truth is revealed: the central relationship — romance even — is between Cécile and Anne.
Anne (Chloë Sevigny) is a woman spoken about before we meet her. Cécile (a star-making role for Lily McInerny) is on the French seaside for the summer with Raymond (Claes Bang) and his younger girlfriend Elsa (Nailia Harzoune). Their days are spent languishing by the water, reading literature, and eating delicious food. Raymond and Elsa have a sort of puppy love, an energy akin to Cécile’s with neighbor boy Cyril (Aliocha Schneider). Raymond casually mentions that he’s invited Anne, an old friend of his and Cécile’s late mother, to stay with them. Elsa immediately starts criticizing Anne. Her work as a fashion designer, her uptight nature, her lack of a smile. Then she questions this reaction. After all, she’s never even met Anne.
When Anne does finally show up, she does not disappoint. The casting of Chloë Sevigny is inspired, because she’s a stellar performer and because she brings with her a gravitas from decades of persona. There’s a moment when she eats an apple alongside Cécile and Elsa. As the other two chomp into their own fruit, Anne cuts hers with a paring knife, elegantly sliding the knife and apple slice into her mouth. Elsa watches Anne. Cécile watches Anne and Elsa watching Anne. We watch all three.
Despite updating it to near present day, Chew-Bose follows the plot beats of the novel to an almost exact amount. And yet within these beats, she’s invented rich scenes of subtle character development and grounded dialogue. The film recalls the work of Éric Rohmer, not just in its lush French aesthetic, but in the compelling nature of every conversation on-screen.
And so the plot does not really matter, nor the fact that the plot revolves around two men. While Raymond and Cyril are just as grounded and clear, the women themselves view them more as a vibrator or a pet store kitten. They are to provide pleasure, they are to be cuddled, and they are to be envied when in the arms of another woman. The connections themselves are secondary. They want these men, because other women want them, or because of what being desired by these men would say about them.
This is communicated through dialogue, but it is communicated even more through the film’s images and sounds. Chew-Bose does not rest on the ease of her scenery. There is a formal confidence, exciting from a first-time filmmaker, a deep understanding of cinema as a craft and all it can accomplish beyond the page.
In a movie where women and girls watch each other and themselves — one of whom is a fashion designer — the clothes and accessories and hair is given the utmost attention. Commented upon or just present is also their postures, how they walk, how they smile, how they fuck, and, yes, how they eat.
This film has a sumptuousness that some may mistake for vapidity. But the style of the characters and the style of the filmmaking is what tells the story. As many women know, often the substance is in the style.
I started this review with Charli xcx and now I’ll end it with Bob the Drag Queen. “I think I’ve landed on the hottest of my hot takes,” he said recently on comedian Caleb Hearon’s podcast. “Straight people don’t exist… I think that most straight women will acknowledge that women are sexy. They will acknowledge it and they might even lickety splits every once in a while. A couple of Coronas.”
Sans Coronas, how do straight women usually acknowledge this sexiness? Through jealousy, through envy, through admiration. Is this always sexual? I’m not sure. But it is always desire.
Before straight society became concerned about lesbianism, girls used to have crushes on girls and women and this was seen as normal. Maybe queer desire is a natural part of everyone’s coming-of-age. Maybe it’s how we figure out who we want to be.
Durga Chew-Bose’s take on Bonjour Tristesse is a rich film. There are individual lines of dialogue that hold essays within them. But, on a first viewing, I was most taken by this desire. Cécile is trying to choose between turning into Elsa or turning into Anne. The harshest truth of growing up is she can only be Cécile.
this looks so good
I just want to express how much I loved this review! Not only because the author clearly enjoyed the film, but also because her unique and spot-on perspective, in my view at least, is the most refreshing take I’ve read on this remake yet.
Omg, I’m so happy to see this article! I’m compiling an anthology of lesser known examples of wlw lit fic, mainly foreign. I got definite lesbian vibes from Bonjour Tristesse when I first read it (Cecile actually denies the possible reader suspicion that’s she has a ‘morbid passion’ for Anne) and there is some critical commentary on this aspect, though not enough.
Sagan herself was either bi or les; definitely her key relationships were w women. (She had 2 brief marriages when young, one to her much older publisher, then one to a gay man. She did have one later bf, but he was also gay). Her great love was Peggy Roche, her son has written v movingly about them. She also had a long affair w the French Playboy journo Annick Geille, who’s written a book.
Francoise Mallet-Joris wrote a similar bk around the same time, Les Remparts de Beguines (translated as The Illusionist), but in this the teenage girl and the mistress have, disturbingly, an actual affair. She also had ltrs with women. I haven’t yet read it, but Terry Castle introduced the new translation & recommends it highly.
I have been putting off reading this book for years. Might bump it up the tbr.