Preminger

It’s also worth noting that this film is an adaptation of a book from the 1950s, and layered over that is the first adaptation of the film by Otto Preminger, which came out shortly after the book.

Otto Preminger’s 1958 adaptation, pairing the then-scandalous story with a luminous Jean Seberg, Deborah Kerr and David Niven — plus an experimental use of both Technicolor and monochrome — only burnished its appeal, inspiring the French New Wave to boot.

World premiering in Toronto, celebrated writer Durga Chew-Bose makes her filmmaking debut with a fresh take on Françoise Sagan’s novel, once adapted by Otto Preminger.

The novel and Preminger’s film relied on the device that its protagonist was looking back on monumental events from the perspective of that title sadness, so Chew-Bose’s defiantly in-the-moment telling, kissed by Maximilian Pittner’s sun-drenched imagery, feels like a bonus at first.

Otto Preminger’s 1958 adaptation of the book helped make a star of Jean Seberg in the role of Cécile.