Authorial visions: Saverio Costanzo’s negotiation with auteurism

Abstract

Abstract This article presents Italian film-maker Saverio Costanzo as an example of contemporary auteur. I argue that critical discourse on authorship within the cinema of the third millennium should look at how contemporary directors engage with the idea and the practice of authorship. In this article, I will discuss how in Costanzo’s films elements of auteurism intertwine with diverse formal and thematic motifs and create an idiosyncratic cinematic corpus able to engage critically with various traditions of Italian cinema. In particular, I will examine three common parameters of Costanzo’s cinema: the construction of confined spaces in the mise-en-scène, the display of post-human bodies, and the genre hybridity of his films. My goal is to highlight how Costanzo’s authorial voice dialogues with auteurism by embracing principles of art cinema and simultaneously destabilizing and revitalizing them with a skilful blend of genres, traditions and postmodernity.