Bonjour Tristesse

Now a New Major Motion Picture directed by Durga Chew-Bose and starring Lily McInerny, Chloë Sevigny, and Claes Bang

Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse, first published in 1954, is a bittersweet coming-of-age story set during a beautiful summer in France. Seventeen-year-old Cécile enjoys a carefree holiday with her charming, widowed father and his latest lover, while exploring her own independence and romantic desires.

Her carefree summer takes a turn when Anne, a close friend of Cécile’s late mother, joins them and begins a relationship with her father. Unwilling to give up the freedom she shares with him, Cécile devises a plan with her young lover to drive the couple apart. What begins as a game of manipulation soon leads to devastating and unexpected consequences.

A celebrated exploration of adolescence, desire, freedom, and the complicated emotions of growing up, Bonjour Tristesse remains a striking and ambiguous portrait of a young woman trying to understand (and control) the world around her.