Chloë Sevigny feels it’s inappropriate to cast her in a female version of Françoise Sagan’s novel

The 1958 version of “Bonjour Tristesse” is everything Hollywood seems to fear these days: a filmmaker’s infamously cruel, allegedly misogynistic interpretation of a book written by and about a French teenager. “He used me like a Kleenex and then threw me away,” Jean Seberg said of director Otto Preminger. Well, get out the Kleenex for a more sensitive (and very chic) take that asks: What might an adaptation of “Bonjour Tristesse” look like if it were a woman interpreting the words of Françoise Sagan? Or, better yet, what might it feel like?

Montreal-born writer-director Durga Chew-Bose delivers an impressionistic tale with an emphasis on tangible details: the way the French Riviera sun hits your skin, the relief of sitting in front of an open fridge on a hot summer night, the smell of your dad’s aftershave. While promising, appealing, but ultimately empty, Chew-Bose’s debut offers viewers a vicarious vacation to the South of France, in which vivid sensory memories accompany words far too eloquent to have come out of a 19-year-old’s head.

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Chew-Bose has a more generous idea of what motivates Cécile, played by Seberg in the previous film and now by Lily McInerny, to intervene in her father’s love life. But it’s all so vague — and so strangely miscast — that the new film will circulate, find a few admirers, and then fade into obscurity, doing little to replace Preminger’s version.

Cécile’s father is played by Claes Bang (from The Square ), whose Raymond is his usual handsome self, bringing Cécile and his newest love, Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune), to their vacation home on the French Riviera. Cécile accepts her widowed father’s womanizing habits, but she feels threatened when he invites—and almost immediately proposes—one of her mother’s old friends, Anne (Chloë Sevigny). There’s nothing about Anne that fits the father’s mold, and Sevigny does nothing to convince us otherwise. Taking a page from “Twins Are Not Yours” (or perhaps Shakespeare’s classic comedy), Cécile hatches a plan to keep them apart.

In the earlier film, Seberg stares into a mirror, studying the reflection of a jealous, short-haired blonde who would later star in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless , and says, “It’s not her fault he doesn’t love you anymore. It’s your fault. You’re spoiled. And willful. And arrogant. And lazy.” While Chew-Bose doesn’t let go of Cécile, she resists such a reductive psychological interpretation, inviting us to identify with the teenager so that this ill-fated summer ultimately feels more personal, as if her regrets and mementos were our own.

So much of the film is simply spent relaxing, in moments that, however lazy they may seem, are meticulously captured (by the talented cinematographer Maximilian Pittner) to evoke the most fashionable sense of boredom: Cécile tracing secret messages on her boyfriend’s bare back, or dozing in a low, mustard-yellow armchair. Even the way she butters toast is unforgettable.

Some will recall the work of Sofia Coppola, who, like Chew-Bose, focuses on sensations that other directors find elusive. Here, too, there are echoes of “Call Me by Your Name,” both in Cécile’s youthful passion and in the more adult interpretation of her actions. But the most apt reference seems to be Jacques Deray’s “La Piscine,” in which Alain Delon and Romy Schneider bask by a pool a decade or so after Preminger’s film.

For no good reason—and countless bad reasons—Chew-Bose sets his version in the near present (Raymond at one point orders Cécile to throw her iPhone into the sea). In doing so, he inexplicably rejects the sexual revolution that Sagan’s novel heralded. Rather than being ahead of its time, the source material now feels dated, and Cécile’s near-chaste flirtation with Cyril (Aliocha Schneider) is scandalous only in its improbable restraint.

Modern street signs aside, “Bonjour Tristesse” plays like a mid-century mood piece — a stylish oasis of modern life, replete with apathetic demeanor and retro detail. From the colorful tiles that appear under the opening credits (which can’t compete with those designed by Saul Bass for the original) to the vintage fashions and cars (Sevigny wears a headscarf, while McInerny poses in several vintage swimsuits), it doesn’t seem to understand what Anne represents.

Why cast a counterculture icon like Sevigny as a stark cosmopolitan? It’s a slightly unsettling choice, like when Luca Guadagnino injected Tilda Swinton into his remake of “La Piscine.” In love with such unique and daring stars, their directors can’t grasp how out of place they seem in the context, or how their presence distracts from the intended tragedy of their films.

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