The Name- Game: ‘The Tourist’

According to Elise (Angelina Jolie)in the popular film ‘The Tourist’(2010), a person can love anyone on the condition that he or she is ready to accept both good and bad in the other. On that understanding, she is instructed by her lover Alexander Pierce to find ‘someone from the same height and size’ ( of that of Alexander Pierce) and make them (the Interpol) believe ‘it is me’ to distract the intelligent network. The most fascination element starts evolving from the moment that she gets into the train and looking for ‘that man of same height and size’. The viewers are already aware that she is looking for her bait and there is nothing but a sharp seduction for a short period. But what the film proves is very opposite of what we are made to believe. That means what we always meet is what we always try to escape from. In her there was already a void to be filled by ‘an unknown stranger’ because we could find that she is caught in the intense game between Interpol and Pierce whom she does not find what she wants. Piece has been using her beauty and skills for his own profits but what she wanted was love. She is caught is a master-slave relationship where she accomplishes what she is asked to do as a distraction and was looking for an opportunity to break this bondage (freedom through a man!).

The initial dialogue between Jolie and Frank, the math teacher, is more fascinating on the ground of their ‘name game’. The dialogue goes as follows,

I am Frank.

That’s a terrible name.

That’s the only one I’ve got.

Let’s find another.

O.K.

What does this mean? Does he not have an identity before this gorgeous woman? Or is he ready to give up his identity before her? Once his wife died in a car crash, he was looking for a new life. Now that she is in front of him, perhaps he wants to shift from his earlier memory to a new identity. More than this, Frank is willing to give in to her discourse of ‘you can love anyone if you can accept his good and evil at the same time’. This is the mystery of the transference. He already knew that there was a void in him and a woman could take his former identity away at some point. That is why is unhesitantly agrees to ‘find another name’. She too already knew that there was a ‘vacancy’ in this man (for that matter, any man in that train!) waiting to be exploited. What is obvious here is our ‘jouissance’ is pre-programmed in us.