'Triptyque' de Claude Simon: du livre au film, une esthétique du passage (review)

Bérénice Bonhomme sets herself a potentially fascinating task: a study of the relationship between Claude Simon's novel Triptyque (1973) and the twelve-minute film entitled Die Sackgasse — L'Impasse (1975) based on the novel, which was directed by Simon and produced by Saarlä ndischer Rundfunk. Because of the inaccessibility of the film, researchers have generally had to rely on brief interview comments by Simon and on the stills that he occasionally showed to visitors or that were published in the special number of the German review du devoted to Simon in January 1999 (no. 691) and in Irène Albers's electronic publication, 'Zwischen den Bildern und zwischen den Zeilen: Intermedialität in Claude Simons Triptyque und Die Sackgasse' (www.uni-konstanz.de/paech2002/zdb/ main.htm). Consequently, 'Triptyque' de Claude Simon is to date the only full-length study in French to focus on the two works. The monograph is divided into three main parts, framed by a cursory introduction and conclusion. The first part explores the relationship between the novelistic and the cinematographic codes, focusing on narration, the status of the character/actor, the role of the spectator and adaptation issues. The second part examines montage, continuity and optical effects, while the third is devoted to the relationship between the ludic aspects of the text and film, and their role in a creative process which, Bonhomme argues, is situated between destruction and hope. Each of the three sections is prefaced by a brief analysis of one of Simon's own photographs, none of which have any direct connection with either Triptyque or L'Impasse. The book also includes three appendices: a summary of Triptyque, an approximate retranslation of the interview which accompanies the film and an attempt, with the help of Christophe Girard, to plot the shots of L'Impasse as a story-board. The book's chief contribution to Simon studies lies in its analysis of certain details of the novel and the film: for example, the commentaries on the choice of John Lennon's Instant Karma as part of the film's soundtrack (though, in one remark, Bonhomme mistakenly attributes the song to the Beatles), on the construction of space in the novel and on the relationship between regard, interdiction and death. However, the usefulness of the study is compromised by a number of faults: undiscriminating and facile use of analogies with painting, cinema and literature; lack of regard for the compatibility and consistency of the many references to theory and philosophy; its working assumption that the woman in the seaside sequence of Triptyque and L'Impasse is to be identified with the character called Corinne in La Route des Flandres; the very selective bibliography; and the lack of engagement with other critical work on Triptyque (notably, perhaps, Guy Neumann's 1983 monograph on Triptyque and Leçon de choses). The publication of this study will perhaps serve to alert non-specialist, francophone readers to the existence of L'Impasse; it is to be hoped that it will also prompt more rigorous studies of both the film and its relationship to Triptyque.