Étreinte des fantômes de Véronique Taquin : Du rêve en réseau au roman-vidéo, un montage polybiographique

Abstract

Lucques encounters Niels, his former lover who disappeared some fifteen years ago, “the phantom emerging from a dream outside of time” (Taquin, Étreinte; my translation). They meet at a hotel but cannot speak. To understand their past and their present desire, Lucques, a film editor and webmaster, invites the contributors of the private blog Odds to enlighten him, using text and video, about Niels’ personal story.Like an epistolary novel, Étreinte des fantômes is supposed to be written uniquely by the characters. They contribute using pseudonyms: Lucques, his psychoanalyst friend Ghostwriter, Nolan and Horatio, who seem well-acquainted with Niels, and five videographers… one of whom is Niels.This networked structure, combined with the power of dreams and images, illuminates both familial and political emotions. The meaning emerges from the prism of viewpoints and the interweaving of imaginations. The (auto)biography of the couple is a “polybiography.” Its tragedy is sublimated by a story that confronts the discontinuity of life through assemblage. The narrative voices speak through dreams and memories, texts, images, and sounds. The jump cuts call for interpretations. Caught up in the game, Ghostwriter herself reaches a deeper self-understanding, as all readers are invited to do by this text based on mise en abyme and self-reflection.