Adieu, Lacan

Published: June 5, 2022, 11:03 a.m.

If all this Becoming of late is becoming overwhelming, we take a break from On Becoming a Person to talk about a new film from New York, called Adieu, Lacan, featuring an interview with the director, Richard Ledes. The film is fictional, but the main character of Seriema, played by Ismenia Mendes (Orange is the New Black), is based on the real life of Betty Milan, a Brazilian woman who traveled to Paris for a series of analytic sessions back in the 1970s with the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, played by David Patrick Kelly (Twin Peaks). 

Dan was ill with no voice for the recording of this episode, so in lieu, as English-speakers like to say, is a French person, Sammy, who has many opinions—quelle surprise—on both Lacan and the film.

The episode starts with an interview with the director, followed by a review of the film, a discussion of Lacan and his views on politics and relationships, and then a conversation about psychoanalysis around the world, the language of existentialism (and K-pop group BTS), and Freud becoming a totem in France. 

To watch the film, it's available now on many streaming platforms from www.adieulacan.com

“Freud thought a film could never transmit what happens in an analysis... but I am quite sure if Freud saw this film he would fall in love with it... at last, psychoanalysis has reached the cinema”

— Marco Antonio Cortinho Jorge, Corpo Freudiano do Rio de Janeiro