The intrigue set on the Riviera is the same, but move the story from the 1950s to the present day and the once-controversial novel feels strangely old-fashioned.

The 1958 version of “Bonjour Tristesse” is everything Hollywood seems to care about these days: a notoriously mean-spirited, allegedly misogynistic interpretation of a book written by and about a French teenage girl. “He used me like a Kleenex and then threw me away,” Jean Seberg said of director Otto Preminger. Well, grab your tissues for a more sensitive (and rather chic) take, one that asks: What would a film adaptation of “Bonjour Tristesse” look like if it were a woman interpreting Françoise Sagan’s words? Or better yet, what would it feel like?

Montreal-born writer-director Durga Chew-Bose offers an impressionistic retelling, emphasizing the tangible details: the way the Côte d'Azur sun beats down on your skin, the relief of sitting in front of an open refrigerator on a warm summer night, the smell of Dad's aftershave. While promising, Chew-Bose's appealing but ultimately hollow debut offers audiences an indirect vacation to the south of France, in which vivid sensory memories are accompanied by words far too eloquent to have sprung from the mind of a 19-year-old.

Chew-Bose has a more generous sense of what motivates Cécile, played by Seberg in the earlier 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 make the rounds, find a few admirers, then fade into obscurity, doing little to replace Preminger’s version.