Video Reviews : Movies : ****Excellent ***Good **Ordinary *Poor : <i> Recent releases, reviewed by Times critics.</i>

*** 1/2 “Bonjour Tristesse.”

RCA/Columbia. $69.95. 1958.

Though a failure in America--where its mix of French, British and Iowa accents grated on sophisticated audiences--this adaptation of then-teen-ager Francoise Sagan’s novel is the cornerstone of director Otto Preminger’s French reputation. Preminger and star Jean Seberg--swerving 180 degrees from “Saint Joan”--show a rich, summery, amoral milieu, with a Don Juan (David Niven) and his reckless daughter (Seberg) petulantly leading a good woman (Deborah Kerr) to seaside catastrophe. The mood of urbane detachment and sardonic moral judgment is bracingly sustained, and the color scheme--muted monochrome for the joyously hedonistic present, bright hues for the doomed past--is fascinating: “The Wizard of Oz” meets Antonioni. (Wide screen, scan print.)