ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

preppy-3 **SPOILERS THROUGHOUT** Cecile (Jean Seberg) is a rich spoiled college girl who is far too attached to her loving father Raymond (David Niven)--her mother has passed away. An old friend named Anne (Deborah Kerr) visits them while they're on vacation in France and falls in love with Raymond. Cecile feels threatened and will do anything to stop the love affair. This all leads to tragedy.I never read the book this was based on so I can't compare but, on its own level, this is a strange but beautiful soap opera. I originally saw a brand new print of this ages ago in an art house and the colors and beautiful scenery came roaring off the screen. I vaguely remembering liking it...but being confused. Seeing it again I can see why. The film acts like it's making some big important message...but it's not. It's well made and all but nothing here stands out. The only element that was surprising is that it makes it clear that Cecile and Philippe (Geoffrey Horne) are having sex...but she is punished for it (in a way) at the end. This was just director Otto Preminger's second attempt to make Seberg a movie star. It's not a total washout--it's too bizarre to just completely dismiss. I do like the way it shows the present (actually 1958) in black & white and the scenes one year before in bright color. However the reason for the juxtaposition is pretty obvious. The acting varies. Kerr is excellent in her role and Niven is just OK in his. Horne is pretty affecting too but he's not given enough to do. Unfortunately Seberg is terrible in her role. Except for the ending she always has this blank look on her face and it's impossible to get a grip on her character. There's also some hysterically bad dialogue. So it's not a washout but no big deal either. For Kerr, the color and scenery alone I give it an 8.

JasparLamarCrabb Otto Preminger directs this light as a feather story. Bohemian Jean Seberg and her equally bohemian widower father David Niven holiday in the South of France with nutty Mylène Demongeot. Things are fine until family friend Deborah Kerr shows up. Nivens, a degenerate womanizer, finds the conquest of Kerr too hard to resist. That's fine with Seberg, as long as Niven loves her and leaves her (as he's done with all the women in his past...including Demongeot). When it appears as though she's becoming second banana in Niven's life, Seberg exact revenge on Kerr. Preminger tells the story in flashbacks from Seberg's perspective and cleverly combines black and white with sunnier color scenes. The cinematography by Georges Périnal is stunning. The film features some of Preminger's least heavy-handed direction, although he rarely allows any close-ups, which makes it difficult to make out what the actors are really feeling. Arthur Laurents wrote the script and it's full of acidic dialog and funny scenes (mostly involving bird-brained Demongeot). Seberg acquits herself fairly well, but Niven is at his least appealing...and he shows no chemistry with either Seberg or Kerr. Preminger really mis-steps with that casting. It's a role that seems tailor made for someone closer to Charles Boyer. With Geoffrey Horne as Seberg's would-be suitor and Martita Hunt as his daffy mother. Juliette Gréco, playing herself, sings the title song in a Paris nightclub. The great titles are by Preminger regular Saul Bass.

bkoganbing The trio of David Niven, Deborah Kerr, and Jean Seberg star in Otto Preminger's Oedipal drama Bonjour Tristesse. With those Givenchy gowns featured, how did Audrey Hepburn miss this film?Based on the Francoise Sagan novel, this is one strange tale of a playboy father, the daughter who adores him and the woman who threatens to come between them. Niven is the playboy who must have inherited his wealth because he doesn't look like he worked a day in his life. At one time he was married and had Seberg with his late wife. Anyway she travels with him and enjoys life and its vices the same way he does.It's all right when Niven's fooling around with Mylene Demongeot, the latest in a string of flings, but when old flame Deborah Kerr shows up and wants to marry Niven, that puts Seberg off.Truth be told Kerr had no right acting like a stepmother before the wedding. Still it didn't justify what Seberg set in motion that ends in tragedy.The novel is French based of course and I think the French should have filmed it. I think Otto Preminger was just the wrong director for this kind of material. Geoffrey Horne plays Seberg's boyfriend and Martita Hunt is his mother round out a stylish cast. But with only one actual person of French nationality among the main cast. that was a big mistake.

rsternesq This is an odd movie based on a rather simple and not very odd book. First of all, making the father/fiancé so very British is odd in a French context. Even more peculiarly, the actor with the least ability and an American to boot, was the only one of the main trio who seemed French and indeed managed to make herself French during her short life. That said, it is worth the time, is interesting and, of course worth talking and writing about. However, if is not a great movie, not even a good one. Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda resound in my head as the inevitable unfolds. In any event Ms. Kerr is always well worth watching and Mr. Niven is no slouch either. He does manage to convey that he knows he has blighted his life and no, he wasn't a dirty old man. He was a man in his prime with no purpose and is keenly aware that he is marking time. As to the inference of incest, the matching tied shirts, the interest in each other's comings and goings all heightens a sense of unhealthy over-investment. However without that sense of over-investment in daughter by father and in father by daughter, one would have no plot, n'est pas?