Chloë Sevigny Shares How the Female-Led Bonjour Tristesse Set Welcomed Kids: ‘Going Away for Me Is Becoming Harder’ (Exclusive).Linh

Chloë Sevigny‘s latest film was shot on the French Riviera, but that wasn’t the best part — its family-friendly set was.

Speaking with her Bonjour Tristesse cast at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, Sept. 6, Sevigny, 49, says she felt at home bringing her then-3-year-old son on the international shoot.

Director Durga Chew-Bose brought her young child, as did several female producers. “Kids were on set, toddling around a little,” says Sevigny, who is mom to Vanja, now 4 with her husband Sinisa Mackovic. “It was really just a warm environment.”

“I think going away for me is becoming harder,” she continues of having to leave Vanja. “But now he’s starting to realize that I’m an actor. He knows if I’m on set. He loves trailers. He loves craft services. Whenever I do photo shoots he’s like, ‘You’re acting right?’ I’m like, ‘It’s adjacent,’ ” the style icon laughs.

Bonjour Tristesse, adapted from the 1954 novel, follows a young woman (Lily McInerny) spending a sun-soaked summer with her father (Claes Bang) and his girlfriend (Nailia Harzoune), who is not so much older than her. The holiday plans are disrupted when a chic fashion designer and friend of her late mother (Sevigny) comes to visit.

“I think as a person who’s aging, just to play an elegant character like that who really knows themself and is very self-assured and measured — it was opportunity for me as an actor to play a different color that I don’t often get to play,” says Sevigny, who next stars in Ryan Murphy’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.

Having directed several short films, Sevigny, who first earned fame at age 20 after being cast in 1995’s Kids, was also eager to support Chew-Bose’s directorial debut.

“We [also] had these wonderful producers, female producers, it felt like there were all these babies on set,” she says. “It felt like a real kind of den, which I like and is rare. I mean, you’re so often on sets when you’re surrounded by men as creatives, as runners, as the actors. So the mixed alchemy of that was really attractive to me as well.”

Bonjour Tristesse is currently up for sale at the Toronto International Film Festival, which runs through Sept. 15.