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Technological University Dublin
CALL: Irish Journal for Culture, Arts, Literature and Language
Francis Leclerc; Sigmund Freud; psychoanalysis; patricide; memory; totemism; Québec; national identity; film noir; Freud
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Patricide Or Mourning The Nation-State In Francis Leclerc’S Looking For Alexander, Sophie Boyer
Patricide Or Mourning The Nation-State In Francis Leclerc’S Looking For Alexander, Sophie Boyer
CALL: Irish Journal for Culture, Arts, Literature and Language
This article examines two closely connected dimensions of Francis Leclerc’s 2004 film, Looking for Alexander: a psychoanalytical dimension and a political one. Freud’s theories on the murder of the primal violent father in his essay Totem and Taboo provide the framework for a psychoanalytical interpretation of the protagonist’s fate: Alexandre Tourneur, a veterinarian struck by amnesia, embarks on a quest for his lost identity. Facilitated by the totemic figure of the deer, the act of remembering gradually leads to a conscious awakening to the events of an abusive childhood and the crime of patricide he committed as a boy …