Have you been watching HBO’s sublime “My Brilliant Friend,” an oddly under-the-radar Italian series that follows an aching female friendship, among the rarest breed of stories? If yes, chances are you may already be swept up by its acutely cinematic pull, delicate world-building through the 1950s and ‘60s and intricate insights into class, gender, and most of all, the hearts and minds of women. If you haven’t been watching it, well then, you might want to add it to your quarantine viewing list and get busy watching.
Adapted from bestselling, mysterious author Elena Ferrante’s wildly popular tetralogy of Neapolitan hovels and having recently concluded its intoxicating second season, “My Brilliant Friend” has just been renewed for a third installment, with an up-in-the-air production timeline due to the ongoing pandemic. So there has never been a better time to catch up with the show’s artistry and get to know the two young, ambitious, boundlessly intelligent females at its center—the turbulent Lila Cerullo (Gaia Girace) and the mild-mannered Elena “Lenù” Grecco (Margherita Mazzucco) as lifelong partakers in a tricky, beautifully messy camaraderie where “brilliant” goes both ways.
READ MORE: ‘My Brilliant Friend’ Trailer: HBO’s Italian Drama Adds Alice Rohrwacher As A Director
Series creator Saverio Costanzo wrote all of the episodes alongside co-scribes Laura Paolucci, Francesco Piccolo, and Ferrante, and directed all but two in the second season. That pair of exceptions are helmed by Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher, who infuses the series with her own surreal touch; a tonal diversion very much encouraged by Costanzo, as he details in our below chat.
Alice’s sister Alba Rohrwacher narrates the tale from the voice of the older Lenù; an acclaimed author remembering and writing about her friendship with Lila, whose potential was stifled by her family from the young ages. Through this framing device and the flashback nature of the narrative, Costanzo and his team of writers manipulate time in remarkable ways throughout the show, condensing and stretching it as necessary while holding the viewers’ hands alongside a decades-spanning yarn, marked by struggles political, social and generational.
There is a dizzying wealth of cinematic influences and craftsmanship here (more on them below). Historical echoes of Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave are aided by an immersive production design, Max Richter’s neo-classical score (including the composer’s own spin on Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”) and “I Am Love” costumer Antonella Cannarozzi’s subtle designs that ingeniously establish not only the two leads but also a crowded canvas of superbly cast supporting players—men and women that both enable and obstruct Lenù and Lila’s respective journeys as family members, friends, boyfriends, neighbors, teachers and sometimes, predators. But what remains constant in “My Brilliant Friend” is above all a sense of profound femininity that survives the deeply rooted patriarchy of the locale and the era, as well as a sharp examination of ways in which women relate to each other as allies and circumstantial rivals.
(The below conversation includes numerous spoilers for “My Brilliant Friend.”)
You obviously didn’t meet or work with Ferrante in person. So what was that dynamic and process like, working with someone you don’t know remotely, alongside a team of co-writers?
We basically [would] write the show, the series, the season. And then we send the script to her and she made notes. She sometimes would say something, reworking dialogues. But what I found from the very beginning, [she was] very open to every change that we proposed. You know, there are some writers who are very conservative with a book. But she was really open from the beginning. I believe she knows cinema very well. She is a cinephile. In fact, many of the scenes of the book are in the series, like the dialogues, [as] they were in the book and they work wonderfully. So she has the taste for the kind of freedom that makes film and cinema different from literature.
I didn’t realize until recently that some think Ferrante might be a man. I mean, we are of course allowed to tell each other’s stories as men and women, but the specificity of the female psyche and how women relate to each other….I mean, all that must be coming from a woman.
I agree totally with you and no, I never considered that possibility [of Ferrante being a man] either. I mean, I’m not a woman, so for sure it’s hard for me to understand the feminine gaze. But I’m a hundred percent sure she’s a woman. She might have masculine writing, but the heart of what she writes is very feminine.
You were talking about the books being very cinematic. The series itself is, too. There is a deep sense of time, place, and cinema history in each episode brought to life with attention to authentic detail.
You know, once I started to conceptualize the series, I faced a story that belongs to the Italian Neorealism. The story starts in ’54, which is the beginning of Neorealism. So I don’t know if that was a suggestion coming from the book or once you put the characters on film with costumes and in this kind of environment, it then became Neorealism. It’s something you have to face for sure. So the way I designed to tell the story was trying to follow the same kind of rhythm of Neorealism, the same kind of distance. Directors like [Roberto] Rossellini, [Vittorio] De Sica…they were following the character. Mostly, the characters were real, coming from the street; they were not professional actors.
And you [could] feel there [was] a distance between the camera and the actors. I mean, the way the director looks at the actors; there is a respectful distance. So I approached the first season with the same kind of look. I didn’t try to use Steadicam. I tried to just use tracks. I didn’t use any kind of modern-ness. I was really following the story like it was back in the ’50s. Of course, we are working in a backlot, in a studio. Everything is built by us. So what was very interesting for me is what happened once you [collided] with something very real. Like, non-professional actors meeting with a story with the same kind of subjects that were [being done] by Neorealist directors back in the 50s, but in a stage that is all artificial. In Neorealism, they basically abandoned Cinecittà to go on [a journey] and to shoot real stories. [But in our case], I believe the clash between the artificiality of the stage and the reality of the actors somehow [became] something unique. You feel there is a tradition to it, but it’s also something new.