A TV adaptation of Elena
Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend got a 10-minute standing ovation
at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday.
The public lapped up the first two episodes of an eight-part
series by Saverio Costanzo that will hit Italian TV screens this
autumn.
Ludovica Nasti and Gaia Girace, who play the young female
leads, and Alba Rohrwacher, who is Ferrante's narrative voice,
took a bow along with Costanzo.
The TV mini-series based on the first book in Ferrante's
bestselling Neapolitan Quartet will screen in the US and on RAI1
at a date to be set, producer Lorenzo Mieli said.
The author writing under the pseudonym Elena Ferrante has
said that she is "intrigued" by the fact that one of her
Neapolitan novels is being made into a eight-part television
mini-series.
She added, in an interview with the New York Times published
last May, that it is a "radical change" and that the
"characters, the neighborhood are all created from words, and
yet they move from literature to the screen. They leave the
world of readers and enter into the much more vast world of
spectators, they meet people who have never read about them and
people who, for social circumstances or by choice, would never
read about them. It's a process that intrigues me".
The HBO-RAI mini-series based on her international
best-selling novel "My Brilliant Friend" will be directed by
Saverio Costanzo, produced by Lorenzo Mieli and Mario Gianani
for Wildside and Domenico Procacci for Fandango.
The author, who has always protected her real identity, was
asked "What is your hope for this production as far as its
impact on Naples and its image in the world, especially after
the unflattering depictions in the movie and popular television
show "Gomorrah"?".
Her response was: "Cities don't have their own energy. It
derives from the density of their history, from the power of
their literature and arts, of the emotional richness of human
events that take place against that background. I hope that the
visual storytelling will stir authentic emotions - complex and
even contradictory sentiments. This is what makes us fall in
love with cities."
The project does not foresee the author taking part directly
in the writing of the screenplay, since, as she says "I don't
have the technical skills to do it, but I am reading the texts
and send detailed notes. I still don't know if they will take
them into account. It is very likely that my notes will be used
later on, in the writing of the final draft."
Her interviewer Jason Horowitz wrote an article on
a casting day for the mini-series in Naples.
On the choice of who will be playing the part of the
protagonists Lila and Lenu', she said that "I'd very much like
to weigh in, but I would do it cautiously", since "no real
person will ever match the image that I or a reader have in our
minds. This is because the written word, of course, defines but
by nature leaves much to reader's imagination. The visual image
instead shrinks those margins. It is destined to always leave
out something that the words inspire - something that always
matters."
In her eyes, "My Brilliant Friend" is "a realistic tale. It
is childhood that is colored by elements of the fantastic, and
surely Lila is too. As far as faithfulness to the book, I expect
a faithfulness compatible with the needs of visual storytelling,
which uses different means than writing to obtain the same
effects."
The author then answered ironically to the question: "HBO is
involved in the production. Do you hope, or maybe fear, that
this will become the next global phenomenon, Italy's "Game of
Thrones"?", saying that "Unfortunately, "My Brilliant Friend"
doesn't provide the same kind of plot points.".
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