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.
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.