Psychoanalytic Analysis Of Stanley Kwan's Still Love You After All

In psychoanalytic theory, there are two contrasting models of memory, illustrating how narrative could reconstruct memories. The first believes the stable and tangible past could be retrieved as archaeological excavation, while the second challenges the possibility of the recovery of original memory, while proposes the notion of Nachträglichkeit, i.e. Afterwardsness, which means the understanding of events is always deferred, in later re-transcription, assuming memories are never reliable. Stanley Kwan’s autobiographical documentary, Still Love You After All These, stands out to be a perfect example of the second model, showing how “Nachträglichkeit”sheds light upon the study of narrative by emphasizing on narratives functioning as the deferred

Then, it will move to discuss how Kwan’s a-chronological and personal narrative makes sense and indicates memories continually contribute to the (re)construction of identity. Afterwards, the form of autobiography and documentary, as well as reenactment of Kwan’s previous works would be analyzed to show the significance of narrative on rearranging life stories. Finally, it will argue that this film is not only a personal memoir, but an important footnote of Hong Kong identity, by intertwining personal narrative with collective recollections, represented by the familial trope serving as a collective

Starting from the joke about the architectures on construction, then moving to the old-time Cantonese opera, and shifting back to the view of modern Hong Kong streetscape, the sentimental voiceover of the film guides the audiences to shuttle between the historical and modern Hong Kong, as well as between the collective memories and personal experience, whereas the logic linkage between them remains unclear, indicating the form of narrative time is carried out by emotions rather than logics, and thus “does not flow in only one direction” (Williams qtd in King 20), which resonates with the mode of remembering proposed by the therapists that in autobiography, recollections are presented in discontinuous images or scenes, detached from each other, and is illustrated by Christopher Ballas, usingthe concept of the “unthought known” that the unpleasant memories are repressed by fragmenting rather than absolute forgetting (qtd. in King 20).