Lily McInerny also stars in this updated take on Françoise Sagan's 1954 coming-of-age story, about a young woman meddling in her father's love life.
is so enticing — a Mediterranean town in the South of France, where a large villa looks out toward the sea — that it instantly draws you into this adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s classic novel. The first film by writer-director Durga Chew-Bose, its story of adolescent longing, jealousy and sexual awakening, updated here to the present, is always glorious to look at — from the brightly colored floor tiles to the glittering water.
The plot is essentially the same one that made Sagan a sensation when the book was published in 1954. The author was just 18, the age of the film’s central character, Cecile , whose point of view we largely share. She is on vacation with her father, Raymond , and his latest young girlfriend, Elsa , who like the others is sure to be replaced soon. Sevigny plays an old family friend, the stylish but proper fashion designer Anne, who comes to join them.
But she has been a sophisticated observer of Raymond’s womanizing. Part of the new version’s problem is that the sexual freedom that seemed shocking seven decades ago no longer does, for either father or daughter. The most outlandish behavior here is that everyone smokes and the adults even light Cecile’s cigarettes for her. Chew-Bose’s screenplay doesn’t explore the characters deeply enough to replace the book’s jaw-dropping quality with any psychological depth.
Sevigny does much better in her role, partly because Anne is already so tightly wound. She wears her hair up in a severe twist, has a prim bearing and tries to get Cecile to study for her college entrance tests. The actress has one amazing scene when the camera, close on her face, captures a look of pure, eye-opening pain as she recognizes how faithless Raymond can be. But too often these characters merely announce their feelings..
Cecile’s plotting leads to the tragic consequences that end the book and introduce her to real sadness. Crew-Bose makes the daring choice to extend the story beyond the novel and it gives her one of the film’s best episodes, chilling in its revelation of the emotional fallout of Cecile’s actions.
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