Category: Emma Latham

Colors and Clothes: The Construction of Mise-En-Scène in Cosmonauta and Arianna

In the last half century, films have portrayed the female subject and female sexuality as a hyper-sexualized narrative. Throughout the last few decades, women have experienced sexual liberation, economic advancement, and globalization. In addition, although great change has come about for women as they now have the same basic rights as men and gender dynamics have improved over time, women are still hyper-sexualized in media, and because times have changed, newer discourses have been brought to light such as queerness. In this paper, I will be analyzing two Italian films, Cosmonauta (Nichiarelli, 2009) and Arianna (Lavagna, 2015) that illustrate two young women who fight for their liberation and identity. Cosmonauta is set in the early 1960’s at the time of the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States. The protagonist is a young, rebellious teenager named Luciana (played by Miriana Raschillà). She is passionate, outspoken, and determined. Hungry for change, Luciana joins the local Federation of Italian Communist Youth group in which she is the only female. As a result of this, Luciana must affirm her gender in order to be taken seriously alongside her male peers, most of whom do not even listen to her ideas. Set in modern times, Arianna takes place over the course of several at a family lake house. Having gone through gender transformation surgery, Arianna (played by Odina Quadri), the main character, is trying to find her true sense of self: her female self. Her cousin, a fully developed and sexually active female serves as Arianna’s foil, a physical representation of all the things Arianna is lacking in order to become her true self. Because of the grand gender themes that are brought up in these films, both directors ultimately construct our understanding of Luciana’s gender affirmation and Arianna’s gender fluidity through the mise-en-scène of their purposeful wardrobe choices, sets, and cameras’ color palettes.

The term “mise-en-scène” refers to what is put in front of a camera. Essentially, anything from props, lighting, the actors, and landscape—natural or manmade—are all components of mise-en-scène (Columbia University). When analyzing the aesthetics of a scene, mise-en-scène is a very important concept to use in order to understand the bigger, often social concepts that are at play in the film. Luciana in Cosmonauta, is a young woman with big dreams and aspirations to one day go to space. However, because the film takes place in the early 60’s and the women’s liberation movement is just getting started, she must fight and affirm her gender in order to make her voice heard amongst a predominately male social justice youth group. To convey Luciana’s strong stance on feminism and communism, director Susanna Nicchiarelli dresses her differently from the other teen girls in the film by giving her short hair, no makeup, and the same old, red coat, as well as countless other red sweaters and skirts. In an interview I conducted with her, Nichiarelli discussed at great length how she goes about constructing her characters’ physical appearance. Essentially, when casting, she looks for imperfection in her female leads because she does not care about beauty. In film, one is trying to capture reality, not beauty. Thus, Nichiarelli looks for simple, staple pieces of clothing when selecting the wardrobe for her protagonists. In Cosmonauta, Luciana is always seen wearing a red coat, which Nichiarelli confirmed as being a special clothing piece that she and her costume crew made for the character to feel safe in and affirm her gender as a strong, intellectual, young communist woman. (Nichiarelli, Susanna. Personal interview. 3 April 2019.) 

Another way Nichiarell conveys communism in the film is through the set design of the classroom in which Luciana and her peers gather for their Federation of Italian Communist Youth Group meetings. The walls are painted bright red and right in the center is a mural of Lenin, Marx, and Engels, who are the founding fathers of communism. This space turns out to be very significant in the film because there are two scenes in which Luciana both loses everything that is important to her and then gains it all back, and both instances occur against the same wall. In the first scene, Arianna has just witnessed her crush, Vittorio (played by Michelangelo Ciminale)—whom she has been having intimate contact with—fool around with mean girl Fiorella (played by Chiara Arrighi) behind her back. Heartbroken, Luciana goes to the classroom to confront Vittorio, but to her surprise, he outwardly shames her for having sexual desires when he says, “Do you know what you are? No one gets engaged with girls like you.” At this point in the film, Arianna has strained relationships with both her mother and brother, broken up with her boyfriend, and lost her position in the “Unione Donne in Italia” (or Union of Women in Italy) where she would have traveled to Moscow with the Italian Communist delegation and represented the youth section of this organization. And now, the one boy she thought cared for her went behind her back with another girl. With all of this going on in her personal life, Luciana is literally thrust into the middle of communism because Vittorio pushes her against the bright red wall with the communist figures. In this scene, Luciana is stuck in between trying to maintain both her professional life—being a young woman advocate for social change by representing several important organizations—and her personal relationships with family and boyfriends. In this scene, it is clear that Luciana has lost it all.

Not much later in the film, Nichiarelli returns to this same wall and once again positions Luciana in center frame. However, this time, Luciana is grinning from ear to ear because all of the relationship problems she previously had have now been smoothed over. Her brother—who she was previously at odds with—has forgiven her, Vittorio apologizes to her and they are now together, and her ex-boyfriend, Angelo (played by Valentino Campitelli) smiles warmly at her, and Luciana, positioned in the center of the red communist wall, smiles back, having regained her personal life. Although she does not get to go on the trip to Moscow, Luciana still regains her agency in her professional life as she celebrates her idol, Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to go to space (Sharp); Luciana’s happiness and aspiration to become a future woman leader is evident to us as the camera lingers on her gazing fondly at the poster of Valentina Tereshkova.

Susanna Nichiarelli’s construction of Luciana’s clothing, physical appearance, and the specially designed red wall with the communist figures at the Federation of Italian Communist Youth Group headquarters help to visually tell the story of a young communist fighting both for social justice and for her agency as a woman. Similarly, Carlo Lavagna, the director of Arianna, visually tells Arianna’s story of finding her true sense of self as a newly transgender woman through purposeful mise-en-scène with the camera’s color palette. Because blue is the color associated with water, the shots in the film have a blueish tint to them to further convey our understanding of Arianna’s fluid sexuality. In addition, Lavagna centers his landscape shots around bodies of water that literally represent fluidity such as a lake, pool, waterfall, and melting ice. In an interview I conducted with Carlo Lavagna, he elaborated further on the significance of the location of his film and the visual storytelling behind Arianna’s gender fluidity. The majority of the film takes place at the family lake house, and Lavagna mentioned in his interview that as a child, he vacationed at a lake and thus he subconsciously thought of using his friend’s lake house in Tuscany for the set. He explained that the process of recalling his own experiences as a child at his lake house was one of the main sources of inspiration behind the film’s grand theme of gender fluidity. He made it clear that he was thinking how was a child, one is not fully developd sexually and he pursued this thread in the film. Another source he pointed to when writing Arianna’s character was the Greek myth of Hermaphrodite, a creature that has both male and female sexual organs (Scarpa). In the myth, the creature is born out of the water, and, inspired by this detail of the story, Lavagna mimics it in his opening shot. The camera slowly pans down a waterfall where a naked Arianna is floating, and we hear her narrate in a voiceover the story of her life thus far as a transgender woman:

The first time as a little boy, on an especially warm day in January, in Rome. A few years later I was born again, this time as a little girl, among the woody hills of central Italy, and my mother named me Arianna. The third time was when I was finally born, in the summer, when my father got back to the lake house where I had grown up as a child. But it took twenty years for this birth to come about. (Arianna)

This opening scene is just one example of the flowing water symbolism that Lavagna deploys all throughout the film in order to emphasize Arianna’s gender fluidity. Another way that he captures this sensation of water and fluidity into the frames is through Ariana’s dress. Again, in the same way that Luciana from Cosmonauta always wore red as a way for Susanna Nichiarelli to reference communism, Arianna is always in some type of blue tank-top or shirt and denim shorts. Additionally, she has icy blue eyes that make her stand out when placed in frame amongst the other characters and landscapes. 

Lavagna continues to visually convey the imagery of flowing water through the functionality of the camera; it moves slowly and tracks the characters gingerly. This filming technique is especially apparent in a scene early on in the film. Arianna, her cousin, and her cousin’s boyfriend are swimming in a waterfall. Similar to the opening shot of the film, we see the waterfall and ice slowly appear into frame as the camera pans downwards, eventually reaching the depth of the water, where the cousin and her boyfriend are making out intensely. The camera lingers on the pair for a while before finally panning upwards to where Arianna is sitting, watching them with envy because she is not yet able to experience these sexual desires. The movement of the camera, the way it flows smoothly and slowly is a powerful representation of Arianna’s search for an eventual attainment of gender fluidity. (Lavagna, Carlo. Personal interview. 8 April 2019.) 

Women have long been sexualized in film, television, and other mass media outlets; they have long been portrayed as sexual beings struggling to be recognized or to gain peace and self-satisfaction with their gendered place in the world. It is noteworthy that even in contemporary times when a substantial number of women have obtained advanced degrees and entered the workforce and other public sectors in large numbers, this cultural trend has not subsided. While there are currently more nuanced portrayals of sexualized women, the narrative thread remains not all that different from years gone by. Though they are set over half a century apart, Cosmonauta and Arianna have a lot in common. Cosmonauta tells the story of a young girl on the verge of adulthood discovering her homosexual desires and her passion for politics. Arianna is also a coming of age film that centers on a transgender woman working to identify and understand her true self. Although for different reasons, both characters are fighting for their gender identity; fighting to be recognized and accepted. Nicchiarelli and Lavagna take full advantage of mise-en-scène to tell Lucianna’s and Arianna’s stories. Wardrobe choices, intentional set design, and a symbolic color palette help to highlight each character’s journey and each character’s gender identity.

Works Cited:

Arianna. Italy: Fandango, RAI Cinema, dir. by Carlo Lavagna, 2015.

Carlo Lavagna (director) in discussion with Emma Latham, April 2019.

“Columbia Film Language Glossary: Mise-En-Scène.” Columbia Film Language Glossary: Mise-En-Scène, filmglossary.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/term/mise-en-scene/.

Cosmonauta. Italy: Fandango, RAI Cinema, dir. by Susanna Nicchiarelli, 2009. 

Scarpa, Vittoria. “Arianna: The Woman Who Was Born Three Times.” Cineuropa, 9 May 2015, cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/298163/.

Sharp, Tim. “Valentina Tereshkova: First Woman in Space.” Space.com, Space Created with Sketch. Space, 22 Jan. 2018, www.space.com/21571- valentina-tereshkova.html.

Susanna Nichiarelli (director) in discussion with Emma Latham, April 2019.

by Emma Latham

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