Cut Out

Denis is trying to uncover his mother's past, and he suspects she kept secrets from him. In Nice, he finds two of her friends, Monique and Clemence. In the 1950s the pair worked as assistants to Matisse in the last years of his life, when age and illness had limited what he could do himself. They pinned his coloured paper shapes into place and helped assemble the large cut-out works. Monique helped inspire his major designs for the chapel at Vence. Clemence, chasing love, became caught up in an affair that ended in violence and disaster.

The two women have an intense, vivid history of their own, but they also hold the key to Denis's past. He is now about to face the hardest test of his life.