When a person transforms their innermost feelings into narration, it creates the illusion of a calm, detached recounting. The narrator reflecting on the past possesses clarity, offering commentary and judgments on past events.
The story of Lila and Lenù continues. The voice of the narrator, Lenù, remains composed, her sentences succinct. With the premiere of the new and final season of “My Brilliant Friend,” Lenù and Lila’s adolescence comes to an end. Their former intense struggles, stemming almost instinctively, have propelled them into their current lives.
Poster for Season 4 of “My Brilliant Friend”
On the new stage, Lenù (played by Alba Rohrwacher) makes her entrance. In the first two episodes, Lila (played by Irene Maiorino) remains a ghost, hidden behind the phone line, while Lenù stands under the spotlight, shedding tears and enduring jeers, as calls ring out. Lila seeks Lenù, but Lenù wants to escape Lila and the past she represents.
At this point, Lenù outwardly seems entirely integrated into the circles she has chosen for herself. With her trendy intellectual attire and a keen sense of color, her love for Nino (played by Fabrizio Gifuni) shines like a beacon, illuminating her from the inside out. Lenù swims through book lectures, political gatherings, and private parties, respected and able to engage with anyone without inferiority.
Still from “My Brilliant Friend”
In her past, Lenù has always been swimming upstream, entering a more expansive life and ascending to higher social strata, making her growth akin to a highly effective monster-slaying game. She starts with nothing, relying solely on her intellect. Thankfully, Lenù possesses the skill to write, enabling her to articulate the impoverished neighborhood of her birth, as well as her family and growth, including the most challenging aspect: Lila.
Now, it is finally Lenù's turn to take center stage and bask in the limelight. Aside from the change of actors, the most significant difference between middle-aged Lenù and her younger self is that she no longer harbors grand expectations for the future. Instead, she submits herself to desire, willing to forget the world and her daughter. She enjoys an unprecedented freedom of choice.
“I love Nino more than my two daughters,” Lenù declares unapologetically. The shared nightmare of Alice Munro's protagonists—a mother almost losing her children due to a lover—is not Lenù's nightmare. She is now wholly focused on being the heroine of a love story, unconstrained by morality, uninterested in being a perfect mother, simply wishing to remain forever in Nino's gaze.
Still from “My Brilliant Friend”
Lenù, the writer, once generously lent us her eyes, sharing memories. Her existence served as a buffer, making the brutality, violence, and unpleasant realities of poverty bearable. But now, that buffer is gone; Lenù abandons that role and steps into the long-awaited dream she yearned for since her youth.
Even Franco’s (played by Stefano Dionisi) death cannot interrupt her daydream. Lenù spins joyfully like a little girl experiencing a dance for the first time; once she starts, she doesn’t want to stop. She twirls until all the past blurs, the dance hall lights flooding in. Only when the pain ceases to stab does she regain calm to share her story with others. In her spinning, hope lightens, no longer weighing heavily on her chest.
Franco, trapped in a room, the gentle educator, self-respecting yet lost, suddenly dies. The depiction of his death seems all too familiar, as if it were a play within the farce Lenù is currently performing.
Franco's death appears as a window flung open by the wind before Lenù, revealing the ruin of the revolutionary ideals they once shared. Yet this view isn’t desolate; in her love-drunk state, Lenù sees only the beautiful foam of a summer bubble bursting.
Still from “My Brilliant Friend”
The original author, Elena Ferrante, strives for “authentic and profound” writing. Whether Lenù is a tragic heroine or a melodramatic lead, she can no longer earn the general respect of her audience. Yet, fortunately, she remains very real.
The "Neapolitan Novels" approach their conclusion here. Lila and Lenù, born in the impoverished neighborhoods of Naples, remain intertwined by fierce fate. They help, compete against, admire, and love one another, wishing the best for each other's journeys, at times feeling jealousy. With few successful precedents of women escaping from there, they have no ready-made paths ahead.
How challenging it is to emerge from that tunnel. The two worlds connected by this tunnel are worlds apart. On one side of their neighborhood, crowded lives pulsate, many have died, and eventually, they all turn into a murky quagmire. Nazis, mobsters, ignorant writers, workers, communists, and illiterates cling together. Women scream and fight for men, while men talk about men, often resorting to violence. Inside and outside the homes are equally gray.
Still from “My Brilliant Friend”
At this point, the story of Lenù and Lila has also grown mundane. No matter what happens next, their connection will revive with a shared smile that curls their lips.
The new Lila is no longer the elusive prodigy, expertly jumping from one stone to another to avoid drowning. In Lenù's mother's view, Lila is now the Robin Hood of the poor, the only female hero in the neighborhood who can stand up to the Solaras. Even this stubborn, sharp-tongued old woman feels a sense of pride for her. The dazzling talent that Lila exhibited in her youth no longer spreads uncontrollably. Even with new capabilities, Lila does not leave this neighborhood. This stubbornness seems to be a struggle against herself, with no clear victory or defeat. At this moment, Lila's story draws closer to its final self-erasure.
The new Lenù is savoring freedom at a high altitude in the sunshine, having traveled the world. She has yet to realize that, like Lila, she is profoundly lonely and hopeless. The new life growing within her does little to comfort this solitude. After a lengthy and arduous leap, Lila, now grounded, wants to establish order in the neighborhood and aid its residents. Lenù harbors no such grand aspirations; she has successfully integrated into the more civilized and, as it should be, open-minded class.
But she discovers that even if the neighborhood left behind was hellish, it is still a part of her being. Within this new class dwell many like Nino, Pietro (played by Pierre Giorgio Bellocchio), and their families. They employ a charming coldness to maintain the workings of this class. Such coldness can, of course, be both elegant and intriguing, but unfortunately, Lenù does not belong here. Her disdain for Naples is akin to an offense against herself. Hence, while she can engage in banter with the permanent residents of this class, she can never think like them.
If Season Four ended in the first three episodes, there would be no regrets.
Still from “My Brilliant Friend”
What lingers is this neighborhood, perhaps just the memory of it. In the opening of each episode, amidst the tense sounds of violins, people hurry to and fro, seemingly filled with boundless vitality, yet unaware of their destination. As this season’s plot moves back and forth between Lenù and Nino, and vice versa, the bustling crowd is left in the past.
Like Lenù, I do not wish to live here. Yet it is so familiar, pulsating deep within memories cornered in every part of the world.
Poverty and congestion create comparable human environments, brimming with quarrels, violence, poverty, desire, and ambition. Love can only manifest in forms that are crude and careless. When people are too close, resources are unevenly distributed, and the powerful and cunning hold the majority, any human enclave becomes a mirror of their own neighborhood. Should any of its members be unfortunate enough to harbor hope and possess greater wits, they will simply suffer more. Lenù and Lila are such examples, as is Lenù's mother.
This kind of neighborhood is like a tumor, either entirely eliminated or perpetually existing, with little chance of improvement. More terrifying is that this tumor resides within each native resident's body. Lila’s attempts to improve it will fail, just as Lenù’s efforts to rid herself of it cannot succeed.
As if, can Lenù sever ties with her mother? In the first three episodes, the best scenes include Lenù's mother. This strong-willed, often enraged woman embodies the feminine aspect of the old world, forged from the poverty and male order into a solid rock. There are few calm moments in their relationship, yet both are aware that the love between them is no less than any mother-daughter love.
Humans are complex, filled with profound emotions. Amid the ever-changing, some things remain constant. In today’s increasingly flattened world, “My Brilliant Friend's” fidelity to complexity glimmers like a diamond.
Still from “My Brilliant Friend”