Metacinema and Artifice: Fourth-wall Transgression and Narrative Reflexivity in The Wonder

Abstract

This essay examines Sebastián Lelio’s The Wonder (2022) through the lens of metacinema, focusing on how the film employs mise-en-scène and fourth-wall transgressions to foreground its own artifice. Beginning with its startling opening on a soundstage, the film repeatedly disrupts narrative immersion, calling attention to the constructed nature of cinematic storytelling. This essay places these scenes in dialogue with Federico Fellini’s And the Ship Sails On (1984), a masterclass in reflexive cinema that similarly reveals its backstage machinery. By situating The Wonder within broader traditions of cinematic self-consciousness, the essay highlights how metacinema transforms spectatorship from passive consumption into an active, interpretive ritual. By destabilizing realism and exposing the scaffolding of film, The Wonder crafts a story while interrogating the very conditions of storytelling itself.