Bonjour Tristesse. 1958. USA/UK. Directed by Otto Preminger. Otto Preminger's adaptation of Françoise Sagan's scandalous bestseller is a masterpiece of elegant ambiguity, filmed in Cinemascope on the Cote d'Azur. Jean Seberg, in her second collaboration with Preminger after Saint Joan, plays Cécile, a wealthy teenager whose carefree, vaguely incestuous life with her playboy father (David Niven) is threatened when he becomes engaged to a cultured, dauntingly mature fashion designer (Deborah Kerr). The film shifts between black-and-white present-day Paris, where an emptied-out Cécile reflects on past events, and sun-drenched color sequences on the French Riviera that chronicle her destructive scheme to preserve her illusions of happiness.
The 20-year-old Seberg delivers a remarkably nuanced performance as the amoral teenager who comes to understand the terrible consequences of treating life as a game