“Woman does not exist. There are women, but Woman is a dream of man. (Lacan, (1989 [1975], p16)”  

For Freud, the woman was a mystery, a dark mysterious continent. Freud’s inability to grasp the riddle of the nature of femininity culminated in his famous question: What does woman want? Lacan, taking Freud’s question as a challenge, tried to make headway in this perplexing riddle.

In his eponymous twentieth seminar, Lacan did not only argue that women had access to a supplementary jouissance that goes beyond the phallus but also re-affirmed that “Woman does not Exist”, that women “do not lend themselves to generalisation […] not even to phallocentric generalisation” (Lacan, 1989 [1975]). Ultimately, Lacan would go on to state that woman is not-all, as having“an existence, yet no essence as subjects of the phallic function” (Hoens, 2019).

The reader, who might feel confused by this theoretical introduction, will be happy to know that Chihiro Ito’s In Her Room illustrates Lacan’s theory of femininity in refined and lucid manner. However, some critics have failed to grasp that the riddle of femininity animates Ito’s drama. By missing the point, some of these critics’ critical remarks are but mere projections of their own confusion. Is such oversight accidental or a wilful choice to avoid the questioning impact of femininity on the phallic structure of our culture and male subjectivity? We leave the question open.     

In her Room offers the spectator a simple narrative structure, tracing out the way the relationship between Dr. Susume (Satoru Iguchi), a young dentist, and Miyako (Fumika Baba) develops. To gain access to the truth of the Ito’s relational drama, we must first define Susume’s subjective position.

Susume is introduced to the spectator as a subject who is inhibited in his speech and within his social interactions. While he has no problems in playing the role the formalized structure of empty speech reserves for him as dentist, he struggles to assume a position where he can reveal something of his own ego to the Other or where he can invite the other to offer him a glance at their ego. Despite his desire for connection and recognition, his speech fails him; he fails to break through the walls of formality – the unwritten societal script that formalizes the interactions between a dentist and his patient – and the social safety of objective statements. Susume is deeply marked by loneliness – the mental prison of being alone – and the riddle of his purpose within the Other, as born from his solitary position, plagues him.

In Miyako’s room, things are different. While Susume normally flees away in empty formality – hiding his subjectivity by strictly abiding by the the empty prescriptions of speech – to combat the oppressive presence of the Other, Miyako’s room blocks the rays of the Other from shining its suffocating demands on him as subject. Yet, as the narrative increasingly implies, the mere presence of Miyako establishes the protective space that allows him, in a lesser or greater degree, address something of his subjectivity to her.

As Susume interacts with Miyako, the spectator cannot fail to notice that Miyako oozes a seductive mysteriousness. This mysteriousness is not simply because she airs, through her acts and signifiers, a certain innocent frailty and ephemerality, but also because she, in one way or another, always succeeds in being subjectively absent despite being physically present.

In fact, what attracts, confuses and frustrates the subject is the very fact that she always elegantly escapes his/her grasp – the grasp of his desire. With her presence, she eventually confronts the subject with the following question: If my phallic existence does not determine your coming and goings, what does?

All the misery Miyako causes is because she resists phallic generalisation; she remains an a-phallic element – a radical not-all – within a phallic societal structure. All who feel attracted to her – the hungry people around the giraffe, the ants crawling on the carcass of the cicada – seek to determine their own identity, as desired phallus, by forcing Miyako into the phallic logic. Yet, by forcing this phantasmatic veil on her subjectivity, they foreclose any possibility to discover that neither her desire nor her enjoyment is signified by the phallus. As woman, as radical not-all, she escapes as much herself as the escapes the grasp of others. 

Miyako exists within the phallic societal field – she is subjected to the field of desire organized around having or being the phallus, but she has no essence as subject of this phallic function. She escapes Susume’s phallocentric demand to single him out as the one who has what she desires.

Everything goes well between them when Miyako stays the “symptom of” Susume, when she “enter[s] the psychic economy of (…) [Susume] as a fantasy object (a), the cause of (…) his desire” (Lacan, 1974-75). Yet, as Susume interacts with her, he discovers that Miyako is the symptom of many others, that she is ever ready to offer herself to others so that their phantasy can find its moment of truth in her. This discovery does not only force Susume to question his own desirability, but destabilizes his ego. To repair his ego, he embarks on a vain search to determine who determines her coming and goings – who she desires (Narra-note 1). His search – and this should not surprise anyone – is but a reduplication of the oedipal riddle of his mother’s desire (Narra-note 2).

Or, to put it differently, Miyako’s radical resistance to phallic signification – I am the phallus you desire – renders her into an object of anxiety for the male other. The image of the praying mantis featured in Ito’s narrative perfectly illustrates the destabilizing effect she ultimately has on men. In seminar X, Lacan utilizes the same image to illustrate how the subject, by not being able to see “his own image in the enigmatic mirror of the insect’s ocular globe”, is confronted with the following two questions: “What does the Other want with me?” and “What does he want concerning this place of the ego?” (Lacan, 2014 (2004), p6). The ending of In Her Room stages Susume’s answer to this destabilizing and disquieting questioning of his own ego by Miyako’s enigmatic and non-reflective face.

Susume, caught within his futile attempt to tame Miyako in accordance with the logic of the phallus, fails to discern that Miyako offers him a glance at her radical feminine position in her interpretation of the Giraffe-man, the main character in the theatre play they watched together. For Miyako, the giraffe-man sacrifices himself merely to help the hungry, he becomes the object the others desire and fantasize about.

This feminine position is corroborated later in the narrative by Susume and Miyako’s peculiar sexual encounter. Still and emotionless, like a corpse, she sacrifices her physical body to aid him and quench his thirst. Rather than bringing her desire into play, she enters the relational field as a crutch-like object to aid/repair the Other. She is, like we mentioned before, ever ready to offer herself to the male other so that his phantasy can find its moment of truth in her.

Chiriro Ito makes use of languid dynamism, long takes, static shots and slow zoom-in shots to give her composition an engaging but measured visual rhythm. She delivers many moments of visual pleasure by thoughtfully placing of characters within the frame, effectively exploiting geometry – in her exterior as well as in her interior shots, and by relying on beautiful colour-schemes and visually impactful colour-contrasts.  

Chihiro Ito’s use of underwater sounds might seem arbitrary at first, yet there is a clear evocative quality to these moments. In our view, these sounds evoke the moment Susume enters the safe mental space where his subjective desire, which keeps pushing against the boundaries of its bodily container of flesh, succeeds in speaking in his comportment (e.g. the dance on the street, the kiss with Miyako, … etc.). That Susume can only inhabit this aquarium space temporarily is emphasized by its wave-like pattern; its ebb and flow. The bustling city-sounds that, at given moments, shatter the glass of Susume’s mental container signals that the oppressive and suffocating Other is ever present.

In her Room is a narrative that can easily be misunderstood. While Chihiro Ito offers the spectator an elucidating glance at the radicality of femininity – as traced out by Lacan, the phallic aquarium, in which the subject swims, will cloud many spectators’ judgement. Yet, for those who succeed in looking past the phallus will find a renewed respect of the complexity of the feminine position. Highly recommended.     

Notes

Narra-note 1: The wooden carving he tries to make of Miyako should be read as an obsessional but vain attempt to get a grasp on her, to create version of her that follows the flow of his own desire. 

Narra-note 2: Early on the narrative, Chihiro Ito elegantly emphasizes that the figure of the mother, his (m)other, in central in Dr. Susume’s phantasmatic recollections. That something surrounding the mother is not yet fully resolve is corroborated by the distance he keeps from her in in the present.

References

Lacan, J. (1989 [1975]). Geneva Lecture on the Symptom (Russell Grigg trans.). Analysis 1: 7-26.

Lacan, J. (1975 [1974-75]). Le Séminaire. Livre XXII. RSI, published in Ornicar?, Nr. 2-5.

Lacan, J. (2014 [2004]). Anxiety: The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hoens D. (2019). The Logic of Lacan’s Not-All. In Crisis and Critique: Lacan: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Politics. Volume 6, issue 1, 02-04-2019.