My Brilliant Friend, L'Amica Geniale TV series by Saverio Costanzo

I can just treat My Brilliant Friend, L'Amica Geniale TV  series by Saverio Costanzo  because I am waiting for the italian or maybe American copy of the first book of the series.

This TV series is, for viewers, plenty of interesting reflections and considering that it is strictly connected with the books let's try to examine some of the most crucial points.

The series is amazing, touching, plenty of poeticity inserted in a difficult situation for the protagonists. The soundtrack is divine.

There are a lot of disturbing  situations, it is true, but the friendship of these girlfriends is wonderfully well reported and told. The narrator, Elena, gives her best, for trying to define in all its possible shades the beauty of her friendship with Lila.

Let's see the most important thematic.

Friendship: a friendship in grade to survive per decades.
It's not just important and precious this aspect marked with emphasis; it's a rare existential aspect. I knew just the case of my cousin still in contact with a schoolmate for more than 40 years.
Often, it is impossible between two girlfriends, because people change; they change cities and where they don't change cities, or places, they just don't tend of staying connected anymore and sometimes it's much better.

These girls, Lila and Elena, feel attraction because opposite characters and so their friendship continues endlessly.

If Elena is an introvert and delicate girl not too much creative, Lila, black hair, is a brilliant intelligence and a real fearless warrior with strong opinions and a strong character; profound eyes in grade to penetrate other people's soul, ironic and sardonic, Elena sees in Lila the other part of her; the bold one, the one in grade of completing her.
Lila, at the same time, finds in Elena a stimulating friend for learning much more; Elena is a calm creature, someone with a life less complicated than the one of Lila; someone with which to share and experience some moment of relaxation and normality.

Similar families, the one of Elena is more open in terms of education after elementary and mid-term school.

Elena attends in fact after the mid-term schools the Liceo Classico where the girl studies Greek and Latin. This, after strong discussions in her family and thanks to the pressures of Elena and Lila's elementary teacher.

Lila, hunger for knowledge and much more intelligent than Elena starts to read as many books as possible and she understands more than Elena the meaning of Greek myths and topics, but not for competing with her, but because she knows that these topics are attracting and they deserve her attention. She does want to follow her friend also in this new adventure.

After all, in other conditions, she also would have attended the Liceo Classico without to going to work immediately in the store of her family where they makes artisan shoes.

There is sufferance in Lila but also the knowledge, thanks to her hard soul, that the reality is that one; she knows that life is the one she is living in, and there is nothing to do. She knows that her destiny won't be simple and she fights for searching, where she can, and without illusions, that beauty that the literary world presents her. In the third episodes we noticed that Lila abandons the reading, because unnecessary to her daily life.

The two friends when more little, read and re-read Little Women by Alcott many times. They wish to be real and new Jo March; they dream to write a book, telling their own story, with their own voice.

But life is complicated.

Another thematic that the TV series and I guess the book treats is the one of books; books in houses, libraries, everywhere and the importance of reading as instrument of personal growth.

Now: I don't think that everyone can understand this point, truly profound, of L'Amica Geniale if born in places where books are available and they are the normality and not weird creatures seeing with a lot of suspects.

If for people of culture books are normal, you must know that, in houses without books, the normality is that one and books are strangers, and creatures not well seen, sometimes, by adults.

A kid or a teenager who will fight against the entire family because he/she wants to read will meet a lot of problems, because probably born in a social tissue where books are not contemplated and so not "understood:" books are considered by many a damage for the grown of the kid or teenager. I have personally seen teenagers who gave up to reading because parents opposed strong resistance.

Poverty: the base of all it's poverty.
Poverty means sacrifices and buying books is not a joke. Money is necessary for other important voices in the daily life of these families.

The TV series launches various messages in this sense; the use of used books thanks to the massive visit to libraries; the gentle teacher who shares her old classics books with Elena for example for being read during her summer vacations in Ischia; money is not spent and children continue to read and understand reality.
At the moment it's possible to find other modalities for reading at a cheapest price than not in the past.

The families portrayed in L'Amica Geniale or The Brilliant Friend are from a poor rione of Naples.
There is in this sense a certain fatalism regarding life. Life can't be changed, life remains the same experienced by the ancestors and it is better to continue in that way.

The beauty of this TV series to me is this moment of rebellion: two girls Elena and Lilu discover books and culture.

The possibility of seeing under other perspectives the reality that they are living in is a privilege.

No one must search for books  for trying to understand the profound meaning of this world or maybe for being saved by this world. In general writers and creatives are writers and creatives because they fight against personal demons.
Said it, it's not that: books are something else.

Lila for example can't be saved by the young mobster of the rione who wants to marry her; Elena will experience the sad repugnant attentions of a vicious ugly man; good books and for extension culture will give the possibility of seeing reality as if lived into a kaleidoscope, trying to understand what happened, reading facts with a different profundity.

Personally I found hard the first episode of the series, because I would want to see childhood protected; protected by sadness, by horrible facts, a land where all children would stay happy and cheerful, but this one is a fairy-tale, because in certain areas or our country or the world children lose their right to be children pretty soon.

I absolutely hate the obstinacy of the dad of Lila; his desire of marrying her with someone Lila doesn't love at all is pure cruelty; I personally love  these girls, because in their differences they are unique and they permeate the other one in a splendid way. When Elena confesses to Lila she wrote some thoughts Lila had previously expressed to her while they were talking one day and she received an A at school, she told her that for let her know that to her she is like an extension of her soul, someone she admires so badly because of her originality. The uniqueness of her girlfriend is a constant in her existence.


Anna Maria Polidori