Bonjour Tristesse

The form carries the subject directly: the present is black and white, the past is in colour. Cécile, hollowed out and drifting through Paris, appears in monochrome; the summer on the Riviera arrives in sunlight and colour. Memory is alive here and the present is dead. The source is Françoise Sagan's novel, adapted by Arthur Laurents. Cécile lives a carefree life with her father and sets out to sabotage his prospective marriage to a serious woman. The plan works. This was Jean Seberg's second film; Preminger had discovered her for Saint Joan. A year later Jean-Luc Godard cast her in a similar role in Breathless and described it openly as a continuation, saying he could have taken the last shot of Preminger's film and started after a title reading three years later. David Niven plays the father and Deborah Kerr the woman. Who it is for: viewers interested in stylised late-1950s melodrama and in Seberg's place in film history. Who it is not for: anyone who needs to identify with the protagonist. Cécile is selfish, the film does not correct her, and it offers nothing but regret.