My brilliant Friend (tv version)

[selenak]

So let me get this straight: during the recent local elections in Great Britain, all parties with a pro Brexit agenda promoted by their leadership - The Tories, Labour and Ukip, and isn't that a combination that should never have happened - suffered heavy losses, while the parties with a clear pro-Remain, anti-Brexit attitude like the Lib Dems and the Greens gained seats - and the message not just Theresa May but also Jeremy Corbyn say they take from this is "get on with Brexit?"

I've got nothing.

Back to more sense-making fiction: the tv version of Elena Ferrante's novel My Brilliant Friend, the first of her four "Neapolitan Quartet" novels is finally available in Germany as well. After watching it, I googled reviews and discovered the English language ones, from when HBO broadcasted the season, were far more positive than the German ones now which aren't negative per se but complain that this is too faithful an adaption and also that it feels staged, and that something of the wild vitality is lost. I know what they mean, though I don't exactly agree with how they mean it. Not having been in a working class industrial suburb of Naples in the 1950s, I have no idea how crowded, or not, the streets were. (I was in Naples, twice, but in the city centre, trotting the tourist routes.) When reading the book, I imagined them more crowded and cramped, whereas in the tv version you get the sense that there are only the characters present the scene calls for, no accidental bystanders.

The other thing which I had, however, expected, was the transition from first person narrated novel to visual medium means some of the elements get toned down or don't come across with the same intensity, like teenage Elena's deep uncomfortableness with her own body, the way she fears it will turn into her mother's, and her dissatisfying relationships with boys being tied to this way she feels about herself (in addition to being tied to the need to compete).

However, any adaption of those novels stands and falls with whether it can provide a believable Lila, can get the central Lila/Lenù relationship across in its messed up intensity and can provide a sense of all the drama among the supporting cast. (Having read some of Ferrante's earlier novels, I would say the supporting cast is the difference. The earlier novels also offer memorable main characters and at least one intense relationship, but not a memorable ensemble. Whereas in the Neapolitan Quartet, we don't just follow Lila and Elena but also the other families from the old neighborhood and with them the changes in Italian society.) And here, the tv adaption succeeds with flying colours. The four young actresses who play Lila and Elena in the first season (two child actresses in the first two episodes, then somewhat older ones for the two girls as teenagers between 14 and 16 for the remaining season) are all fantastic, which given that I understand the kids at least didn't act before is all the more amazing. And they really look eerily alike.

(Speaking of the casting, I thought it was well done down to the tiny details, like the two young actors playing Alfonso having some physical resemblance to the actresses playing Lila; this irrelevant in My Brilliant Friend but will become a plot point in the last two novels. And the actors and actresses in general looked like every day people, not stunningly good even when they're supposed to come across as avarage.)

Compared to the novel, I'd say the tv version makes it clearer who killed Don Achille from the get go, but avoids too obvious foreshadowing. And it keeps the ambiguity of such events like the girls' attempt to walk to the ocean - did child!Lila simply underestimate the distance and got tired, or was this an attempt to sabotage Elena's permission to continue school? Like Elena, we don't know.

So far, I didn't spot any "new" scenes, or composite characters. And because we're talking tv series, not two or three hour movie, it doesn't feel like a "edited highlights of My Brilliant Friend version, either, it's not rushed but takes the time to establish the Rione.

All in all: a good translation into another medium, and I look forward to the remaining three seasons. And hope the good casting of the two leads will continue into adulthood and middle age.

Comments

[ratcreature]

And weren't these local elections mostly just in rural and suburban areas in England? So presumably the previously more pro-Brexit areas. I think that may be why they assume the frustration is over Brexit not happening (fast enough)?

[selenak]

But wouldn't then the voices all go to UKIP (which isn't in parliament and thus can't be blamed for Brexit not happening fast enough) rather than to parties who are explicitly anti-Brexit? Wait, I forgot: logic does not apply. Insert appropriate Asterix quote here.

[monanotlisa]

...I continue watching the English upperclass and their political decisions in shock and awe, and not the good kind of the latter either.

[ffutures]

Just wait until the Euro elections later this month, then we'll see even more doublethink...