“It could have been a film” by Martine Delvaux, fragments of a romantic detour – Libération

The Quebec feminist novelist and essayist follows in the footsteps of a trio of painters: Joan Mitchell, Jean Paul Riopelle and Hollis Jeffcoat.

Where to start? Perhaps by something violent, dazzling, an opening in medias res, almost abstract and very sonorous. See: “If the film had been made, the first scene could have been this: the car rolling over, hitting the tree, catching fire.” A terrible road accident, preceded by the words “inspired by a true story” – as films sometimes are.

Or perhaps, no, attack with a scene of flamboyant anger, à la Almodóvar. On the screen there would be a woman throwing into the hearth “all the messages she wrote to you over the months”, as if she were putting “the fire to his love”. We would recognize her – she really existed – she would look like the American painter Joan Mitchell, 50 years old at the time, beside herself at being left.

“By small touches or big gestures”

The narrator hesitates like the editor at her table, does not decide, skips a line, moves on to something else, tries differently, and moves forward like that, in autonomous fragments or almost, “by small touches or by big gestures”, without ever being sure of the correct entry. So she puts the work back on the loom. Page 204, other option: “It’s the story of a woman who is dying.” From her hospital bed, she looks out the window and sees her past flash by: Mitchell, Riopelle, the accident.