By casting doubt on “the primacy of the father, which is supposed to be a kind of reflection of patriarchy (la primauté du père [comme] reflet patriarcal)”[1], Lacan created a gap – which it is relevant to maintain – between father and patriarchy. And for good reason as the father of Lacanian psychoanalysis half-says how he copes with his jouissance. His saying conveys a lack, a hole in the symbolic that the Name-of-the-Father has precisely the task of covering[2] with a certain inventive flexibility that the patriarchal order does not offer.
In his latest film, The Crime Is Mine[3], François Ozon depicts a formidable critique of the struggle against patriarchy. Deliberately wishing to keep the temporality of the play from which the movie was inspired in order to allow “a certain derision”[4], F. Ozon invites us to go back in time to confront the patriarchy of the thirties by relying on the discourse of the time. As the first spectator of his films, framing all the images, F. Ozon creates in this dramatic comedy a scene within a scene that allows a gap where the semblance can blossom.
The scene at the court is paradigmatic in this aspect: by slipping into the artifice of a lie and using the codes and laws of the time to address the all-male jury, Madeleine and Pauline handle the semblance as it has the “function of veiling the nothing”[5] and thus create a space for playing within the patriarchal order.
Today, faced with “a multiplicity of S1 [taking the place of] the paternal routine” and saturating the lack that can no longer circulate – as Mathieu Siriot indicates in his text to be discovered in this new Nobodaddy publication –, this space is considerably reduced. The subject remains stuck to its object and its cause. Moreover, it is clear that instead of uniting the troops around a common cause, the fight against patriarchy divides.
We can therefore ask ourselves if attacking patriarchy is the right target. Or if patriarchy could not be the name of the uneasiness of separation, as Emmanuelle Borgnis Desbordes mentions it in this Newsletter. This uneasiness, which no longer allows for any lack, any gap with the object, gives consistency to a law from elsewhere which must be fought from now on without the semblance or the malice that language offers, everyone remaining with his or her piece of the real that they throw in the face of their neighbour.
[1] Lacan J., Le Séminaire, livre XVIII, D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant, texte établi par J.-A. Miller, Paris, Seuil, 2006, p. 173 (untranslated, translation for this text only).
[2] Cf. Laurent É., « A new love for the father », Text presented at a 2-day international symposium, Low Library Rotunda, Columbia University, NY – Published p. 75-90 of « The Dead Father, A Psychoanalytic Enquiry », Editors Lila J. Kalinidi & Stuart W. Taylor, Routledge, 2008, p. 86.
[3] Ozon F., The Crime Is Mine (Mon crime), film, France, Mandarin Cinéma, 2023.
[4] « In public with François Ozon for the movie “The Crime is Mine” », podcast from Totémic, France Inter, 10th of March 2023, not available in English.
[5] Miller J.-A., « Of Semblants in the Relation Between Sexes », in Psychoanalytic Notebooks, n°3.
Translation: Ana-Marija Kroker
Proofreading: Aurélie Solliec
Picture: © Nina Tomas
