Lenú sits alone on the beach, in the dark. The air is warm, the breeze off the ocean cool and sweet. The sand has cooled down, slightly damp to the touch; she burrows her heels and wiggles her fingers, and the grains make room. The waves crash, soft but relentless, a welcome hum that ensures, just as the darkness does, that she feels properly alone, unobserved, unheard. She’s free to cry as though no one will ever know, and in fact, no one will. The breeze whips her hair and the hem of her skirt, and she cries, and the cry is a relief, a blessing. Her 15-year-old heart is a powerful muscle, and it aches beautifully. It stirs up a longing, terrible and marvelous.
The sand was cold, gray-black in the moonlight, the sea scarcely breathed. There was not a living soul and I began to weep with loneliness…. What signs did I carry, what fate? I thought of the neighborhood as a whirlpool from which any attempt at escape was an illusion. Then I heard the rustle of sand, I turned, I saw the shadow of Nino.
In a better world, this review would center on how acutely Saverio Costanzo, Elena Ferrante, and Margherita Mazzucco communicate the almost unbearable teenaged pang of loving someone who doesn’t love you back. It would praise that scene, and see all else through the lens of gorgeous, dreadful young love. That it cannot do so is not a failing on the part of My Brilliant Friend. It’s a failing of the way things are. That scene, with Lenú on the beach, rings so true that it makes hearts much older than 15 wring with just a touch of that same kind of longing. But that’s only one scene. There are others, and they’re every bit as honest as that cry on the beach.
His mustache pricked my upper lip, his tongue was rough. Slowly he left my mouth, took away his hand.
“Tomorrow night we’ll take a nice walk, you and I, on the beach,” he said, a little hoarsely. “I love you and I know that you love me very much. Isn’t it true?”
I said nothing.
Constanzo and the rest of My Brilliant Friend’s writing team don’t pull their punches with “L’isola (The Island).” Not even a little. In setting up what seems, at first, to be the series’ first Lenú-centric hour, they let the story unspool slowly, like letting out the line on a kite, and the episode flies higher and higher. My Brilliant Friend here feels, for the first time, like it’s daring you to not buy plane tickets to Italy (specifically Ischia); everyone and everything is beautiful, from the adorable kitchen bed Lenú has to pack up each morning to the adorable British children to the adorable swimsuits. Lenú embraces the sun, then the ocean, then the people. She feels ugly and out of place, then less so. She reads, she makes friends, and she falls in love with a boy who doesn’t love her back.
But he might like her a little. The episode makes clear that even when out of Lila’s physical orbit, Lenú’s best friend still casts a long shadow; Nino’s (Francesco Serpico) far-away stare when he contemplates the wonder that is Lila’s mind makes pretty clear that while he may have been enamored of both girls, there’s one that dazzled him in particular. Whether he’s drawn to Lenú’s mind, her sweetness, or her obvious infatuation with him, it’s clear that the interest Lenú shows is mutual, but there’s no far-away stare, and it seems that, at first, that’s the heartache to which we’re heading. And so the episode remains sweet, even if it’s also just a little bitter.
That things get worse when Lila finally responds to Lenú’s many letters also makes a certain kind of sense. That’s the neighborhood to which Lenú refers while she sits on that empty beach, once again asserting its influence, dragging her back, just as Lila’s plight tugs at her to leave. That’s the sting, we think; Lenú gets to live with the idea of this boy, while Lila’s nightmare continues; Lenú gets at least the idea of love, while Lila gets only protestations that are far more akin to a desire to own, possess, and control.
And then the poet walks into the room and does exactly what first Lila, then Nino, told Lenú he does. He behaved selfishly, and a woman paid the price.
The sight of Lenú, frozen as a tear runs down her cheek, is the most haunting of this series by far, and while readers of the book will have known what’s coming, the impact is far greater (for this reader at least) off the page than on. The tears that rolls down her expressionless face. The quiet way she tiptoes out of the house. The narration, which tells us that the adult Lenú will not have escaped that moment, decades later, and which also tells us how deeply she internalized the shame she feels. The willingness of Ferrante and My Brilliant Friend to acknowledge one of the most horrific aspects of sexual assault: the idea that the body can respond to an absolute violation (a topic also touched on with expert grace by this year’s Outlander season premiere).
It creates in the viewer a longing for the right kind of pain, the pain you’re supposed to feel when you’re 15: That of sitting on a beach in the dark, crying because the smart boy with cute glasses doesn’t yearn for you the way you yearn for him, because he may like your friend better, because you don’t feel pretty and you don’t feel smart and you don’t feel special. That’s the right kind of pain. My Brilliant Friend gives us the chance to remember that pain, before showing us another.
Osservazioni vaganti
- I love that, even when these girls are nothing but kind to each other, there’s an undercurrent of envy, competitiveness, and occasionally dislike. Friendships can be wonderful as well as complicated.
- Sarratore reading his own story out loud is insanely, perfectly terrible.
- The little touches in Lila’s storyline are excellent: Her obvious enjoyment of the TV and her shared smile with Melina, the grimace of satisfaction with Rino stands up for her again, it’s all so good.
- What an episode.
12 Comments
What a beautiful episode. Every frame was so carefully constructed. I actually lost my breath with that first panoramic shot of the island. Watching the transformation of Lenu from scared little girl to beautiful young woman was astonishing. A little sun, and lots of makeup personnel, can change one’s complexion, yes? (Even though I believe more effort was made to make Lenu look plain.) And oh man, that frightened look in her eyes when she was being assaulted. I hope this answers, for the male viewers, why it is sometimes too difficult to fight and say no. In Lenu’s instance, so much was at play: intimidation, physical overpowerment, overwhelming disappointment with someone who was previously respected, and old-school manners (i.e., do what adults tell you to do and treat them with deference). The idea that Donato didn’t see what her tears actually meant was as infuriating as it was truthful.One more thing: what’s with the credits and the brightly colored background? The cut to the credits after the final scene is so jolting visually. Maybe it is supposed to be that way? So why? I won’t believe you if you tell me that it is something that was just added on for the American version—not when such care is given to everything that came before it.
No idea, it confuses me too. If I find out, I’ll let you know.
I spent the whole episode dreading that scene and it somehow managed to be even more painful to watch than I’d feared. I think a big part of what makes it so difficult is that it never turns away from what’s happening. You keep waiting for it to be over, but it just. doesn’t. end.
I kept promising my husband I wouldn’t spoil anything for him since I have read the books and he hasn’t, but I literally hiss involuntarily whenever Donato appeared on the screen and I had to explain, he is just a bad man (not that any of the others are anything special, but he is particularly, insidiously, destructive). He repulses me. The casting for this show is beyond what I could have ever imagined. They captured every character so perfectly.
My girlfriend did the same thing whenever he was onscreen. Which meant that I knew something was up, and I was pretty sure we were going to see him assault Lenu through the whole episode.
I knew what was going to happen, but that was so painful. Ischia looked like paradise up until then. Leaving on the ferry was the only time the island was overcast and gray. Up until then, it looked so amazing that I wished I could get in time machine to the 50s and find a nice little Italian woman to cook me amazing dinners and sit on the balcony and watch the sea. And Nella was so great to Lenu. I choked up a little when they said goodbye to the English family. It was the only time you really saw her happy the whole series.
This show for me is like having therapy sessions when you have to recount every traumatic memory of your life. Feeling ugly and foreign in my body because my hips and breasts got big, face covered with acne, period started in a summer camp and I too thought I was horribly sick – my mother didn’t bother to warn me and this was pre-internet or sexual education at schools, and yes, hello rag pads! Feeling sick with confusion and shame after being groped on a bus at 16, then on the street at 17 ( add fear). I guess I thought I was just unlucky growing up in third world country, but it’s pretty shocking and terrifying realizing just how universal these experiences are for women.
I haven’t read the books, but I wasn’t surprised by Donato’s assault. It’s baffling that he seemingly is able to convince himself that she “likes him” in the face of the evidence of her tears, but I guess we see what we want to see. I dread what Marcello might do to Lila … I’ve been to Italy many times, but never south of Rome. Naples and Ischia have now secured spots on my bucket list.
Lenú embraces the sun, then the ocean,….. The Ocean? LOL
So just to let you all know: Italy’s RAI – our BBC, we could say, because it’s a public television – censored like all the scene with Sarratore Senior and Lenù, that is now become “an old man kiss a girl who cries”.Funny eh?
When was the novel written? That scene is PERFECTLY horrifying and honest. And it comes out of the blue (unless you’re female, in which case you know that sexual assault can very much suddenly become a part of your story) I feel like it should be required watching for men.
I was in Ischia in March last year just for the day. I imagine it gets crowded in summer, but probably not as touristy as Capri. It feels much more authentic than Capri.