Love (and Marriage?) in Contemporary Italian Film Comedy (MLI2018)

15 credits

Does popular cinema tell us anything about a nation? As its most popular genre, rooted in national culture and rarely created for export, does comedy have something particular to tell us about Italy? Most contemporary Italian comedies are centred on dramas about sentimental and sexual relationships, so on this module we use that theme in order to examine how contemporary Italian cinema uses film narrative to mediate Italy’s relationship with the wider world and changing social mores. In particular we consider how this form of entertainment refracts Italy’s changing relationship with fertility, feminism, racial identity, same-sex desire, fidelity and marriage.