My Brilliant Friend - The HBO Series

I recently finished watching the last episode in the 4-season series of My Brilliant Friend.

Based on four books by Elena Ferrante, the series covered the special friendship of two young women from childhood into old age.

The series was filmed in Italian and thus we used subtitles to read the dialogue.

The first year of the series was 2018, I think, and then we had a season of the series drop every other year. It is unfortunate that it was such a long time between seasons because it was easy to forget minor yet important details. 

Additionally, in the last season, the two lead characters, as well as important minor characters, were played by completely different actresses to portray the aging of the girls. They are in the 40s through their 60s in the last season.

The young girls live in rather desolate circumstances in Naples, Italy in the 1950s. Their community is run by a type of mafia, and everyone is wary of these "bosses" and careful not to step on toes. The two young women are intelligent, more so than the other students in their class, and the teacher sees this. Elena is slightly better off financially than her friend Lila, and it is Elena who goes on to university to continue her studies, while Lila does not fare so well.

The series kept me captivated largely because it was an exploration of what it means to be a woman in a man's world. The story is told not through the obvious male gaze but from an objective point of view, which was refreshing. While the women were often viewed as sex objects, it was not the camera viewing them that way (think of a zoom-in on Wonder Woman's breast as a definition of the male gaze) but the men in the show. It was refreshing to see women portrayed as people who are objectified, not as not-quite-people who are always objectified, as women often are in many movies and series.

Elena and Lila have a rather unconventional friendship, one based upon their mutual respect for one another as well as their intelligence. They begin to believe in the power of the written word when one of them acquires a copy of Little Women, translated into Italian. The story buoys them throughout their childhood, with each attempting to overcome circumstances much like Jo March does in that particular book.

I found the series hard to watch at time as the young women were exploited and used by others, and occasionally by one another. I identified strongly with both characters; each seemed at times to be a part of myself - the one who wanted education and to be a writer, the other who ended up in a world she didn't necessarily want but managed to navigate.

The first book in this series did not set well with me when I read it. Perhaps something was lost in the translation, but I found the TV series much more enticing than the book. I did not read the rest of the book series after finding the first one not to my liking. I found the language stilted and pedantic, but it is not that way in the show. Or if it is, it is not as noticeable as it was in the book.

If you have an interest in the relationships of women, then I recommend this series. But it is not a happy series. This is serious drama covering a serious topic that receives little attention as it is.