Screen adaptation of Angela Carter's Japanese Writings

What is it about?

This article outlines the feature film adaptation of Angela Carter’s “Flesh and the Mirror”, situating it within a critical discussion of her metaleptic narrative strategies and the challenges of translating them to the screen. The screenplay incorporates several of Carter’s Japanese short stories and journalism written whilst written she was living in Japan, that are said to be her most autobiographical writings. The article explores Carter’s own attitude to life writing and highlights the dangers of a straightforward biographical adaptation, contextualising her Japanese writings within her wider engagement with Japanese literature and the I-novel. A detailed discussion of the screenplay demonstrates how the film attempts to emulate Carter’s playful and explicit experimentation with narrative form. Using mise-en-abyme, analepsis, and personification of the Narrator as a separate character, and taking Carter’s overlapping metaphors of marionette/bunraku puppetry, the theatre/film set and magic mirrors, the screenplay undertakes the delicate balancing act of transposing Carter’s “literary gymnastics to the silver screen.

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Photo by Ken Cheung on Unsplash

Photo by Ken Cheung on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Original exploration of Angela Carter's Japanese writings through screenwriting practice, critically reflecting on screenwriting process, whilst also analysing Angela Carter's literary technique and exploring life-writing.

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