ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the film's move from national to transnational and deploys a cosmopolitan methodology to describe the importance of this move. Using a cosmopolitan perspective, we offer a close reading of the film's construction of space and the deployment of formal strategies to frame its location shooting in significant Viennese sites. The cosmopolitan lens allows us to see the transnational relationship as a dynamic of difference and sameness, marked by the characters’ youth but also by their social class and cultural background. The film's transnational meanings, as condensed in the notion of ‘the little space in between’, are discussed in formal terms: framing, editing, the use of long takes and the relationship between foreground and background, or characters and space. While acknowledging the importance of time in the film and the trilogy, as amply discussed by previous critics, we argue that a shift to space was overdue in the scholarly conversation about the film. We finish, therefore, by foregrounding the role of Vienna, and the impact of the city on audiences, as an introduction to the next chapter.
