Philosophy and the Pursuit of One’s Desire: Mathilde’s Project

The present paper is a reading of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s recent film, A Very Long Engagement, mainly through the lenses of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory of the human subject—par-ticularly his notion of the subject’s desire, which constitutes every human subject as a singular being. Moreover, for Lacan the subject faces the task of taking up his or her desire as a prerequisite for truly ethical action. The character of Mathilde in Jeunet’s film, it is argued, may be seen as being paradigmatic in this respect, insofar as she acts in accordance with her desire. This is demonstrated with reference to the narrative structure of Jeunet’s film. In his “ethics seminar, ” Jacques Lacan (1997: 24) talks about “a liber-ating truth ” that is sought in psychoanalysis on the part of the subject. He also characterizes such “truth ” as “particular ” and as being formally (and paradoxically) “the same in everyone though always different. ” This truth, with its “intimate specificity, ” he continues to say, has “the character of an imperious Wunsch. ” He continues (p. 24): “The Wunsch does not have the character of a universal law but, on the contrary, of the most particular of laws—even if it is universal that this particularity is to be found in ever