Rising star Lily McInerny had the kind of New York City childhood you imagine finding in the movies. She grew up in the Village, the daughter of a stay-at-home fiction writer dad and a mom who did marketing for clothing and jewelry brands. “I inherited my love of fashion from her,” says the 26-year-old actress, herself stylish and a friend of the fashion house Celine. When she was eight, McInerny got her first acting credit in a production of Peter and the Wolf through a Children’s Aid Society after-school theater program. It was also her first leading role: She played Peter. She later attended the famed LaGuardia High School on the Upper West Side and became further inspired by her rigorous performing arts coursework and her peers’ ambition. As a preteen she was occasionally looked after by a family friend, the writer and filmmaker Durga Chew-Bose.
Years later, when Chew-Bose was casting her first film—a contemporary adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse—the director thought of her former charge for the story’s protagonist, Cécile. Sagan famously wrote her slim and shocking debut about a teenage girl when she was still one herself. Chew-Bose’s film also stars Claes Bang as Cécile’s dissolute father Raymond and Chloë Sevigny as Anne, a meticulous and worldly visitor to their lives. “Cécile is a character so full of contradictions,” Chew-Bose tells me. “She’s taking notes. Lily listens with her eyes. She’s steady but her steadiness comes with a sweetness. I find that combination very alluring. I also thought it would be fun. It’s so important to me to work with artists who really want to be there. Lily is an all-in person.”
Bonjour Tristesse, out in the United States from May 2, presents McInerny in her second leading part in a feature, following 2022’s Palm Trees and Power Lines, in which she also played a 17-year-old daughter of a lax single parent. In both films, independence comes with consequences. Each character lives a digitally mediated life, one soundtracked through corded headphones, while her summer reading for school gets neglected in favor of beach days and self-discovery through sex. Both performances—dynamic and dissimilar aside from these synchronicities—were directed by women. “It’s not something that I’ve sought out, but I feel really fortunate just given how statistically underrepresented female directors are,” McInerny says. “Being able to have that opportunity so early in my career, I feel really grateful.”
McInerny’s actual experience of girlhood is something she’s been able to start unpacking through these roles. She describes growing up on the internet while social media was becoming omnipresent and developing a fear of being perceived, which affected her self-assurance in real life too. “As a teenager, I felt an immense amount of pressure to stay pure and good during a time when experimentation—whether in substances, style, social life or sexuality—is natural and necessary,” she reflects. Regarding what she learned from playing Cécile: “She doesn’t strive to please, she brushes off convention. She accepts herself completely, embraces her shadow, in protest of a perceived ‘lack.’ I gained so much confidence through embodying her spirit and undid a lot of self-doubt that had been knotted up in me since adolescence.”
Before landing Bonjour Tristesse, McInerny had previously traveled to Paris with her mom, but shooting an adaptation of a beloved French classic in Cassis with a francophone director (Chew-Bose hails from Montreal) left her thoroughly enamored with all things French. The actress modeled her idea of French-girl cool on her friend the artist Alix Vernet, down to her Repetto heels. She read Sagan’s book, saving the climax for when she was on location to add frisson, but waited until filming had wrapped to watch Otto Preminger’s 1958 version of Bonjour Tristesse starring French New Wave icon Jean Seberg. “I felt really connected to it and I felt really attached to the Seberg interpretation of her, as well,” McInerny says of Preminger’s film, which she caught at the Roxy Cinema after returning to New York.
Both Claes Bang, the Danish star of the Palme d’Or-winning satire The Square, and McInerny arrived in Cassis a few weeks before shooting began to get to know each other before portraying father and daughter. Building relationships with the full cast, rounded out by Québécois actor Aliocha Schneider and French actress Nailia Harzoune, was an experience McInerny savored. Collaborating with Academy Award–nominated industry veteran Sevigny was a childhood dream come true. McInerny’s dedication to the project extended to staying on set, reading when it wasn’t her scene. “I loved that,” Chew-Bose recalls. “I loved looking away from my monitor and seeing Lily reading, totally immersed in her book.” The book being The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.
In Bonjour Tristesse, much of Cécile’s character arc is about metabolizing the presence of Anne (Sevigny), a fashion designer friend of her late mother. Though Cécile is reared by her widower father to be sophisticated around grown-ups, it’s Anne who truly initiates her into adult life. The film’s costume designer Miyako Bellizzi, a frequent collaborator of the Safdie brothers, worked alongside designer Cynthia Merhej, of the Beirut-based womenswear brand Renaissance Renaissance, to represent Cécile’s transformation through what she wears. “The introduction of Anne shifts the energy of the house immediately,” says Bellizzi, who references a scene in which Anne gifts Cécile a custom party dress. “From that point on, there’s a shift as we see Cécile start to understand what it means to be seen as a woman.” Aspects of McInerny’s personal style, which ranges from more gamine looks to ultra-feminine 1930s silhouettes, were also successfully incorporated into her character’s wardrobe.
The opportunity to work on a film conceived with such care down to the last detail is one McInerny doesn’t take for granted. “Every single person on that set was somebody who’s deeply passionate about what they were doing, and doing it at their very best. It’s not always that you have a whole group of people working in such synchronicity and with such talent and positivity,” she says. It’s not always that the leader of such an undertaking is someone you already know and trust, much less your former babysitter. “Having [Chew-Bose] be a witness to my own coming of age and then getting a chance to tell a coming of age story together is one of the most special parts of this entire process.”
photography OLIVIA PARKER