Lilac Chaser

Rebecca Hendricks enters Arcadia Psychiatric Facility having convinced herself that she is conducting field work for her thesis; however, her journey to Arcadia is really an attempt at resolving a series of internal conflicts that stem from her brother’s suicide. The isolation that Rebecca finds in the hospital’s liminal setting allows her to turn inward and undergo a journey through which she begins to remember events from her past and thus move toward psychic completion. Rebecca’s inner journey slowly draws her closer to her mother, who herself had been institutionalized following the death of her son, and whom Rebecca resents for a perceived lack of maternal care in the wake of this tragedy. Rebecca comes to realize that her mother is just as traumatized as she is, and the shifting narration represents the coming together of mother and daughter, whose synthesized voices work together to tell their family’s story.