On Paste Magazine

Amy Glynn – Nov 16, 2018

As I’ve noted more than once, I was a latecomer to The Handmaid’s Tale when it came to Hulu. I was not interested. I understood why the novel was popular but I always considered it the most pasty, two-dimensional and politically irritating of Margaret Atwood’s many admirable literary works; I might never have seen it at all if I had a different job. To my surprise, and despite its significant flaws, I loved the show. I can quibble about any number of narrative choices, but artistically I think it’s absolutely top-drawer—and, interestingly, considering it uses the novel as a springboard more than a template, I consider it an unusually high-fidelity adaptation. Even in its second season, which begins after the novel ends and takes off into pure speculation, Bruce Miller and his strikingly talented ensemble cast wring full-fledged contemporary characters from the Pilgrim’s Progress-style cardboard cutouts that populated the book. The book had a legitimate and coherent style, to be sure, but it would not have made good television had it been replicated precisely “by the book.” Some of Atwood’s hallmark stylistic traits—extreme interiority; contemplative stillness; a cool, painterly prose sensibility—would have failed in a medium that places a high value on action and chemistry.

Now, HBO has brought an adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s lauded novel My Brilliant Friend to the screen. And there’s a funny little metaphor lurking in, of all places, the subtitles. The subtitles are in English. The original novel is written in Italian. But the characters speak Neapolitan, an Italian-oid language that’s largely (though not completely) mutually comprehensible with Italian and also has roots in Greek and an extinct language called Oscan. Why is this funny, or metaphorical, or remotely relevant? Well, language is everything in this book, and I mean both Ferrante’s stunning prose and the fact that within the story, languages are plot devices, character designators, and shorthand for very important threads of class and education and mobility, without which there’s relatively little story. The two main characters, Elena Greco (Margherita Mazzucco in childhood; Elisa Del Genio as a teenager) and Lila Cerullo (Ludovica Nasti and Gaia Girace) are bright young girls with an intense friendship based largely on competition, specifically academic competition and the acquisition of languages. Whether characters in the book speak “proper” Italian or Neapolitan is a marker of belonging, a political statement, an implied story about the character’s position in an often brutal and violent hierarchy. So much of this is both figuratively and literally lost in translation when you lift the story out of its native medium that it might be an especially burnished example of a novel that cannot be rendered faithfully and well at the same time.

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On Vulture

Phoebe Reilly – Nov 16, 2018

hen it was first published in 2011, My Brilliant Friend resonated with readers worldwide in a way that few contemporary novels without magic or dragons do. The first of Elena Ferrante’s four-book series introduced a premise that was deceptively simple: Two gifted girls, Lila Cerullo and Elena Greco, growing up in post-WWII Naples, bring out the best and worst in each other. “It happens, sometimes, that your best friend is also your best enemy,” says director Saverio Costanzo, who was selected by the pseudonymous author to write and direct an eight-episode adaptation of the book, premiering November 18 on HBO. “It’s a little secret that we keep for ourselves: Friendship is not just the story of love, but also the story of hate.”

Adapting beloved books to television is always a tricky business, particularly when the plot largely revolves around Latin scholarship and a pair of shoes, in a setting where families can barely survive without putting their children to work. It’s fitting, then, that My Brilliant Friend, which deeply privileges its characters’ love of literature, should have made it to television precisely because it incited a similar passion within its readers. When executive producer Lorenzo Mieli (The Young Pope) finished the books three years ago, he immediately began chasing the rights.

“Think back to what neorealism has done — Bicycle Thieves became one of the most important movies in the history of cinema,” he says, citing Vittorio De Sica’s classic 1948 drama as a defense against My Brilliant Friend’s arguably uncinematic narrative. It took Mieli six months to convince a producer friend of his, who had been planning the adaptation for Italy’s RAI, to think internationally. In 2016, Mieli approached HBO to come onboard with Italian production house Fandango, making My Brilliant Friend the network’s first foreign-language series. (All told, the show will be broadcast in more than 50 countries.) Continue reading →

The TV adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s beloved novel debuts this weekend.

On Esquire

Madison Vain – Nov 17, 2018

HBO launches its newest books-to-TV-adaptation this Sunday night with the debut of My Brilliant Friend. Based on the ridiculously popular—both critically and commercially—Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante, the series transports viewers to a violent, underprivileged, low rise neighborhood in postwar Naples. The world, the way it beats them and the way they’ll need to beat back for the rest of their lives, is seen through the lenses of Elena Greco, who goes by Lenù, and Rafaella Cerullo, or Lila, two precocious girls who launch a life-long friendship in their first year of school.

Before the series kicks off this weekend, here are a few things to know for those unfamiliar with the phenomenon, from the mysterious author to the background of the sweeping plot to HBO’s plans for the future of the story.

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On The North Jersey Record

Cindy Schweich Handler – Nov 16, 2018

Ann Goldstein has been called a publishing celebrity whose “name on a book is now gold.” Praise like that would thrill any writer — which makes the accolades even more impressive, since, as readers of Primo Levi, Pope John Paul II, Pier Paulo Pasolini and Elena Ferrante know, Goldstein is not an author, but a translator of Italian.

The Maplewood native’s name has become even more well-known since her English translation of Ferrante’s international bestseller, My Brilliant Friend, has sold more than 2 million copies in the U.S. to date. The novel, which is the first of four in the so-called Neapolitan Quartet, tells the story of childhood friends Elena and Lila, whose intertwined lives unfold in Naples against a backdrop of violence and intrigue. Now that a filmed version premieres 9 p.m., Nov. 18 on HBO, we spoke to Goldstein about how she conveys the thoughts of great artists — including Ferrante, who is famously anonymous, and whom she’s never met — to their devoted readers.

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On Time

Ciara Nugent – Nov 16, 2018

Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, which have sold 2 million copies worldwide and will debut as an HBO series on Sunday, have won praise as a sensitive portrait of female friendship, but they’re also a modern historical epic, beginning in the 1950s and spanning 60 years. And though its protagonists are the friends Elena and Lila, another group of characters shapes their home of Naples, Italy, and their lives: the Camorra, a shadowy organized crime group that gradually rises to control Neapolitan business, politics and people.

In real life, the Camorra — Naples’ version of the mafia, a term that technically only refers to organized crime groups in Sicily — has a history going back centuries, says John Dickie, a Professor of Italian Studies at University College London and the author of Mafia Republic and Blood Brotherhoods, which tell the story of Italy’s organized crime networks.

“The modern Camorra has its roots in Southern Italy’s prison system in the 1800s,” he tells TIME. The region that now comprises Italy had long been a diverse collection of city states and republics. Its unification into a country in 1861 was accompanied, unsurprisingly, by massive political upheaval — and thus opportunity for criminals. As members of gangs that had been formed behind bars left prison, they found they could easily gain influence in Naples and across the region of Campania. These early Camorra gangs sponsored candidates in local elections and got rich by extorting money from communities and carrying out highway robberies.

The etymology of the term Camorra is disputed, but some historians say it comes from “morra” — a once-popular gambling game — and “capo”, meaning a chief or boss, and originally referred to money taken by the bosses who oversaw the game.

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On Bustle

Tai Gooden – Nov 18, 2018

HBO is diving into the foreign-language original series realm with My Brilliant Friend, a coming of age story about two girls growing up in 1950s Naples. The show is based on Italian novelist Elena Ferrante’s book of the same name, which is the first quarter of her famed Neapolitan novels. The mini-series, premiering on Nov 18, will only have eight episodes, but fans of the book series are very excited to see Lila & Elena’s story come to life. So, it’s no surprise that people want to know more about the My Brilliant Friend cast, especially the four young girls portraying the primary characters at different points during their childhood and teen years.

According to IMBD, 12-year-old Ludovica Nasti will take on the role of younger Lila. This series is her only acting credit on the website but, according to a Vulture cast interview, only one of the four actors had any experience at all. Director Saverio Constanzo and Ferrante wanted the girls to be from the Neapolitan region and as authentic as possible.

Nasti gives a peek into her world as a rising acting star on Instagram with plenty of posts on set and rocking stylish designer gear, which might indicate a modeling career.

Their names and faces are probably unfamiliar to most American fans, but My Brilliant Friend‘s haunting trailer definitely builds some additional intrigue. Lila’s untamed brilliance, Elena’s poised and polished nature, and their keen awareness of the patriarchal and violent world around them are instantly evident, so that’s a good sign. With that being said, here’s everything you need to know about the actors taking on these pivotal roles.

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On Boston Globe

Matthew Gilbert – Nov 14, 2018

Age can certainly improve a performer, as experience and mindfulness seep into the work. But there is something miraculous in the best of child actors, a purity and artlessness you know will eventually pass them by as their bodies mature and their self-awareness expands. Their innocence is uncoaxed, their transparency is unlearned, and their hurt and their joy live right there on the surface, in their eyes. They may be cute, but they’re not trying to be cute.

“My Brilliant Friend,” HBO’s eight-episode adaptation of the first of Elena Ferrante’s four Neapolitan Novels, features a pair of astonishing turns by children. The limited series, about the long, complex friendship between Elena and Lila, breathtakingly renders Ferrante’s world on the poor outskirts of Naples in all its simple beauty and cruelty. But its first two episodes, set in the 1950s, are elevated most by Elisa Del Genio and Ludovica Nasti, who play the preteen Elena and Lila, respectively.

They open up the magical thinking of youth, and show the nascent frustrations of being smart girls in a macho culture. They show us how the girls can be extremely sensitive to the nuances of adult behavior, but also resilient beyond their years. Most importantly, they establish our deep connection to and understanding of the two main characters, which will need to last across the series — and, as is planned, three more adaptations.After a brief framing scene, in which the older Elena (Elisabetta De Palo) gets a phone call that her longtime friend Lila is missing, we’re thrown back into the intimate daily lives of the two working-class children. Del Genio’s Elena is a reticent, bittersweet girl who’s considered the smartest in the class — until Lila lets her own natural intelligence show. They ought to be fierce rivals. While Elena, tall and fair, tries to be well-behaved, Lila, short and dark, is mischievous and, at heart, a rebel. But they click, and find warmth in their friendship despite the hardscrabble tenement world where they live and where domestic and mob violence erupt on a regular basis. We see them curled up together reading “Little Women,” a novel they worship and memorize, and it’s clear they’ve found a bubble of salvation with each other.

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On Time Magazine

Judy Berman – Nov 13, 2018

The centerpiece of My Brilliant Friend, the first of pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante’s four beloved Neapolitan novels, is a New Year’s Eve fireworks display. Narrator Elena “Lenù” Greco and her best friend, Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo, are teens ringing in 1959 at a gathering that has reunited feuding clans in a show of neighborhood solidarity. But a rare moment of wonder in this slum at the edge of Naples devolves into a battle with the local mob family. Lila describes the panic attack that overtakes her that night as an experience of “dissolving margins,” an implosion of her moral universe. Elation gives way to angst as pyrotechnics overload the characters’ senses, culminating in a symbolic end to Lila’s childhood.

Translating a scene this layered into a visual medium couldn’t have been easy for the makers of My Brilliant Friend, the first of four planned miniseries based on Ferrante’s novels, which premieres Nov. 18 on HBO. Yet the scene retains its power onscreen. At first, director Saverio Costanzo keeps a tight focus on the terrace where Lila and Lenù enjoy the fireworks. Then the frame widens and the mobsters come into view. Lila turns sweaty and grim. Lenù watches, helpless. Faces blur into one another. Indeed, margins dissolve.

Costanzo and the show’s impressive executive producers, Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino (The Young Pope) and Hannibal alum Jennifer Schuur, seem to get that the scene is the linchpin of the book. And their fidelity to Ferrante’s vision is matched by their commitment to verisimilitude. In this co-production with Italian public television that was filmed in the Neapolitan dialect, the miniseries’ young actors–cast in an open call–don’t perform their roles so much as inhabit them. Narration highlights Ferrante’s keenest observations. But it is Costanzo’s light hand with Ferrante’s story and motifs that makes this a thrilling adaptation.

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On Entertainment weekly

Darren Franich – Nov 15, 2018

I spent a happy month this year living in thrall to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, a four-part saga following two women across the back half of the 20th century. Ferrante addiction is a global pandemic, of course. Since the 2012 publication of the first volume, My Brilliant Friend, the series has sold an estimated kamillion copies in an estimated bazillion countries. Their sweep is epic, moving with mathematical precision from a particularly memorable school competition, through long days in a working class neighborhood, into great political upheavals and greater personal tragedies. In macro, the mind races for heavy comparisons: Woolf, Tolstoy, Eliot, the other Eliot. And Ferrante’s style is intimate, confessional, very funny. It has the unputdownable quality of one of those Twitter stories that used to go viral before Twitter was an all-consuming virus, a cheerful personal anecdote spiraling toward almost psychedelic rage.

On Miami New Times

Lara Zarum – Nov 15, 2018

The moment that sold me on My Brilliant Friend, HBO’s effective adaptation of the pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante’s best-selling novel, wasn’t a shocking twist or suspenseful cliffhanger. Instead, it’s a quiet, almost banal truth near the end of the first episode. Elena Greco (Elisa Del Genio) and Lila Cerullo (Ludovica Nasti), two girls growing up poor in Naples in the 1950s, sit against a wall in a neighborhood courtyard, playing with dolls. When Lila suggests they swap toys, Elena confers with her doll, announces that she has agreed, and, rather than simply hand each other the dolls, the girls act out, with perfect kid logic, the dolls’ journey, making them walk over to each other on the dusty ground.

It’s just exactly the sort of thing little girls do — endow their toys with the kind of free will they themselves so rarely get to exercise. Premiering on Nov. 18, My Brilliant Friend, the first of the wildly successful four-book series known as the Neapolitan Novels, is full of such details. The story of two girls who are too smart for their circumstances, one of whom will manage to transcend them, the show casts the minutiae of their tiny world as high drama. The stakes are high for narrator Elena and especially Lila, a child prodigy whose father becomes so irate at her insistence that she continue onto middle school that he throws her out the window, breaking her arm.

The miniseries, a co-production with Italian networks Rai and TIMvision, is the first non-English language series to premiere on HBO. It has the formidable task of adapting a work that is not only hugely popular — the books have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide — but is largely concerned with the inner lives of its lead characters, one of whom eventually grows up to become an author. Part of what makes the books remarkable is their elucidation of the process of developing an individual consciousness, and the expression of that consciousness through increasingly sophisticated language. The series honors this as much as it can. In one scene, the voiceover of a grown Elena reflects on a brilliant story that Lila wrote as a child, and remarks, in hindsight, “You didn’t feel the artifice of the written word.” As old Elena reflects, director Saverio Costanzo films young Elena on the rooftop of her apartment, surrounded by flowing white sheets hanging on a line, gazing at a glistening hilltop in the distance — as if to suggest that language is the key to growth, to freedom, to escaping one’s circumstances.

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The HBO adaptation scrubs off the books’ girl-power sheen and returns them to the gritty streets of Naples.

On Slate

Willa Paskin – Nov 15, 2018

At a certain point, any wildly successful piece of art takes on a cocktail-party tag line. There’s the work, with its many meanings, and then there’s the sticky idea that can be passed around with drinks. Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels—a four-book literary phenomenon that’s sold 2 million copies in the United States alone and inspired the sort of frenzy usually reserved for series about supernatural teenagers—was, at the peak of its popularity, discussed over drinks more than most books—or TV shows or movies or anything in our niche-culture age—can dream of. It was pressed by avid readers on family, friends, and strangers, a mass happening that felt personal—or at least that’s how it felt to me, as I raved about these novels to family, friends, and strangers who usually raved about them right back.

The novels, which tell the story of Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo and Elena “Lenù” Greco, women born into the endemic brutality of postwar Naples, Italy, are an addictive personal narrative and a rich social history about the difficulty of transcending one’s class, sex, and home. They are books about degradation, machismo, misogyny, fear, violence, escape, and friendship. But it’s a quirk of our current moment that it’s less compelling to sell the Neapolitan novels as the big honking revelatory literary project that they are than to celebrate them for their portrait of complex best girl friendship—just look at the books’ chick-lit covers. Continue reading →