The Externalization of Mourning: Considering the “Grain” of the Voice in Three Belgian Film Elegies

Abstract

This article explores how trauma writing, combined with thoughtful voiceover work, allows the notion of the “grain” of the voice, formulated by Roland Barthes in 1972, to be highlighted in a particularly striking way in certain Belgian essay films. The research is based on three case studies, three elegies for the death of a loved one, for which three denominations of the voice are proposed here: the incantatory voice of Mary Jiménez in Du verbe aimer (1984), the voice in ruins in Claudio Pazienza’s Scènes de chasse au sanglier (2007), and the carnivalesque voice in Yaël André’s Quand je serai dictateur (2013). The article takes as its starting point the literature on trauma writing, then examines the concrete articulation of writing and speech in the three case studies; and it is completed with quotations from interviews conducted by the author with the three filmmakers.