That Woman

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French Studies at the University
of Guelph. She is the author of Courts métrages et instantanés and La
Soupe.

Misery, loneliness, impossible love, violence, and longing are all
expressed by the three characters in Daniel Danis’s play, which
received the Montreal Critics Choice Award and, in France, the award for
Best French Language Work of the 1994–95 season.

Three voices tell the story behind the tragedy, a tragedy that has no
hero but only victims. A young woman is found exploring her sexuality.
Her family—represented by her brother, the Bishop—hides her in a
shabby apartment, entrusting her to the care of the landlord, who lives
upstairs with his wife and son—and who will, in his patriarchal way,
fall in love with her, have a child with her. Three solitudes. The old
man would like to be able to live with his love and their child. The
woman dreams of a hotel she visits with imaginary men whose photographs
she has seen in store catalogues. And the son, after his mother has
almost killed him, dreams of beautiful and perfumed ladies, as well as
of his mother. Although the loneliness of each of these characters is
total, there are a few moments—such as the plane ride the old man
shares with the son—that represent glimmers of hope.

Linda Gaboriau, who translated Michel Tremblay’s play about his
mother, For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, with such lyricism and
humor, has succeeded admirably in translating Danis, whose voice is very
different.