Film adaptations of unreliable narration in British literature

Here, the audio-visual representations of narrative silence and ambiguity is explored in films adapted from British novels characterized by their “unreliable narrator” (Booth 1961). The goal is to analyse the representation of narrative unreliability on screen in films adapted from novels whose narrator is deemed untrustworthy. The corpus comprises Mark Romanek’s (2010) Never Let Me Go, after Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel (2005); Roger Michell’s (2017) My Cousin Rachel, after Daphne du Maurier’s 1951 novel; and Lenny Abrahamson’s (2018) The Little Stranger, after Sarah Waters’ 2009 novel.

The analysis of these three films yields the creation of a typology of devices for the representation of narrative unreliability on screen, such as camera perspective, voice-over narrator or the use of paratext. The typology is illustrated by concrete examples from the corpus, in which narrative unreliability tends to be retained or even increased through devices such as visual ambiguity.

Dr Enora Lessinger is a Senior Lecturer in Modern Languages and Translation at Oxford Brookes University. Her main research interests are literary translation, audiovisual translation and the translation of gender. She is also a practising translator working with French, Spanish, Portuguese and Hebrew.

This event is part of the Translating Across Cultures and Languages Conference Series at Oxford Brookes University. It is sponsored by the Institute of Languages, Cultures & Societies (ILCS).