Bonjour Sagan

In the summer of 1953, 17-year-old Francoise Sagan began writing "Bonjour tristesse", the title of which was borrowed from a poem by Paul Eluard. The student, who goes by the name Quoirez, has not yet adopted her Proustian pseudonym, inspired by Sagan's princess from "A la recherche du temps perdu". She had no idea that Julliard would publish her manuscript a few months later, in March 1954. The plot features Raymond, a seductive widower, his mistress Elsa and his 17-year-old daughter Cecile, on vacation on the French Riviera. The teenager meets a handsome young man, Cyril, in whose arms she loses her virginity. On this plot, the "charming little monster", as Francois Mauriac nicknamed her at the time, shatters all social conventions in the stuffy France of Rene Coty and wins the Critics' Prize.