The novel “Bonjour Tristesse” by Françoise Sagan adapted once again for the cinema and presented at the Toronto festival

It is a Canadian author who has finally produced this new adaptation of the first novel written by Françoise Sagan and published seventy years ago.

Originally commissioned to write the modern adaptation, Canadian writer Durga Chew-Bose ultimately directed the new screen version of Hello Sadnesswhich was previewed at the festival Toronto International Film Festival Friday, September 6.

Published in 1954, the first novel by Françoise Sagan, then aged 18 (and therefore a minor at the time) had hit the headlines in its time and made her a star. Already brought to the screen by Otto Preminger in 1958 with Jean Seberg, this story about wealth, boredom, excess and betrayal is now adapted by a writer whose first feature film it is.

Starring alongside Chloë Sevigny and Claes Bang, Lily McInerny plays Cécile, a bored bourgeois teenager who breaks the monotony of a sunny summer in the South of France by conspiring to destroy Anne, her father’s new girlfriend. But all this will have unforeseen consequences on the lives of those around her, including her father Raymond (Claes Bang), her jilted girlfriend Elsa (Nailia Harzoune), and Anne (Chloë Sevigny), originally a close friend of Cécile’s deceased mother.

Durga Chew-Bose, 38, says she enjoyed exploring relationships between women, the lies they tell each other and how they wield power.My vision was very strong in my head. These women were really alive in my imagination.” she explained in Toronto.

For her, the book’s themes are as relevant today as they were when it was published seventy years ago. “I think this portrait of a young woman facing the transition to adulthood, and all the many trials that come with this moment in life, is very modern..”

It took the two producers Katie Bird Nolan and Lindsay Tapscott nearly eight years to complete this project.Even though it was written in 1954, there was something very radical about this book. Cecile acts only according to her own desires, taking what she wants, how she wants it, when she wants it.” notes Lindsay Tapscott.

The author and director hopes that the film will encourage young people to buy this powerful short novel. “I think the new generation should know who Françoise Sagan was and how extraordinary it is that she wrote this book so young and had that kind of voice and that fearless spirit,” said Durga Chew-Bose.

For Françoise Sagan’s son, Denis Westhoff, 62, who is the film’s executive producer, his mother “didn’t care about posterity at all“. But, he acknowledges, she would be “flattered to know that her work is still alive“.