When I read "My Gifted Girlfriend" last year, I wanted to write an article about it.
I remember the unfinished article, the first sentence was - if it were to be turned into a film and television drama, I would also look forward to it with my life!
Achieved.
Waiting for a long time, I waited until the launch of "My Gifted Girlfriend", one of the four series of Naples filmed by HBO.
The original writing is so delicate that stepping on a pebble can convey tension.
What kind of palace-level adaptation is HBO today!
Every frame is restoring the scene of the town of Naples in the original book, and the dark-colored streets of the streets are exactly the same as the scenes that were supplemented by the brain when reading the original book. The actors' performances are extremely tense, conveying the subtle emotions of the characters in the book to every capillary.
At first, I couldn't figure out what it would mean to spend four books, 1794 pages, and 1 million words, to write about the friendship of the century between two girls.
After reading the four series of Naples, my feelings are no longer fragmented. The complex feelings, speculations and incomprehension of the characters before reading the first three books no longer exist.
So write down this feeling...
—— "After reading the rainy night of the Naples tetralogy, life for decades is like a joke, like a performance for the record."
This feeling is right. After reading the whole series, all the feelings about all the plots and all the questions that cannot be clearly explained in words are summarized into the above sentence.
The Neapolitan tetralogy = Lila and Elena's friendship = The life of a townsman where Elena lives = A show for the record
It describes the friendship between two girls for half a century, and the output emotions mainly come from the complex psychological changes in the girls' friendship, so the lines are full of considerations and questions about the girls' friendship.
It seems to be a broad topic about how a relationship can go from unfamiliar to intimacy to escape, and finally to the inevitable fate of life.
The story of the first HBO adaptation of the same name that I want to talk about today is also the story of the first book of the Neapolitan tetralogy, My Gifted Girlfriend, which started when Lila and Elena were elementary school students.
The Dynamic Balance of Girls' Friendship - Jealousy
There is a very subtle feeling that the mutual attraction between girls comes from the secret jealousy of both sides without knowing it.
The other party has qualities that are beyond their reach, in fact, the girls themselves can't tell, just feel that the girl opposite makes them want to approach involuntarily.
A friendship sometimes starts with an irrational desire to be each other.
Lila is the cool girl we always talk about now. Everything is a piece of shit in her eyes. Lila doesn't care about other people's thoughts at all. She is not afraid of the locals. She's the kind of girl most girls want to be but don't have the courage and talent to be.
Elena is a good girl, and she will be rebellious in her heart, but the big picture is still a good girl who listens to her family. She is a top student at school and works hard. Her excellence is earned by studying hard, unlike Lila, who is born a learner. .
Her feelings for Lila are complex, and four feelings of envy, jealousy, friendliness, and devotion are intertwined.
Elena began to notice Lila, and she unconsciously wanted to be like Lila, who can be excellent without any effort.
Lila wanted to become Elena. Her father helped her get a chance to study in junior high school. The poor family also squeezed out tuition fees for her. The teacher couldn't bear to punish her.
Before they became friends, they couldn't see the devastation behind each other's backs.
Lila is very gifted and has no chance to study. When she was arguing with her father to study, she was thrown downstairs from the window by her father. After elementary school, she is about to become a strong man in the family.
Elena studied very hard and spent a lot of effort to become an honor student. For fear that her temporary lax grades would slip, she kept holding a sigh of relief.
Usually, the friendship between girls and girls is afraid that there will be no answer after all.
And Lila and Elena's friendship develops a delicate dynamic balance -- jealousy.
"Jealousy" continues to be brilliantly explored throughout the series.
This most deadly emotion, sometimes disguised as love by two girls, is always in progress.
Later, we will see that after becoming friends, even in the next ten or twenty years, they will still see the bright spots in each other. Let’s fight against the injustice of women in this world together with the flesh, Elena’s literary attack, or Lila’s violence against violence. In this work with blood, violence, murder and tears, a feminist movement is slowly developing. Uncover.
Both the original and the series explore the intimate, unbearably painful details and exaggeratedly fragmented feelings of privacy of women in their life experiences.
The relative role of violence and love
In the first few episodes of My Brilliant Girlfriend, we can see that the children of the Neapolitan town have learned how to deal with power from an early age.
Lila deliberately lost to Stefano of the Archie family in the math competition, and won the son of the fruit stand owner Zorn. Because she knew that the Archie family was not to be provoked, and the Solara family had better not touch it.
Zorn is just the son of the fruit-buying man, and it doesn't matter if he wins.
But after that math contest, the boys hated Lila for beating Enzo and started throwing stones at Lila.
Many people were amazed at the beauty of the young Zon, especially when the stone hit Lila on the head, and Zon hurried forward to apologize.
Zon, this handsome boy, after beating Lila to apologize, will give her fruit when he meets Lila.
Spoiler, Zon will be Lila's savior in the back, dedicated to Lila for a long time with love and respect.
This behavior covers both anger and respectful violence .
When Elena was mocked by the boys, Lila pressed a pair of scissors against the throat of Marcello, the son of Solara's family, and told him plainly that she dared to do it. Marcello is terrified, but arouses his love for Lila.
Paradoxically, it's Ferrante to use violence to inspire love, to trace the barely perceptible line between violence and love.
This relationship of violence and love abounds in the Naples series, such as the third book "Leaving, Staying", Zorn becomes Lila's savior and lives together for a long time.
Good books hurt readers
"Books won't change your life".
Ferrante told the Financial Times in September 2014 that "if they're good enough, at best they can hurt and confuse you."
In the third episode, Ada was dragged into the car by the Solara brothers for a "ride". In fact, she was taken into the wild for sexual assault. Why did you choose Ada?
Because she is a child of the common people, she lost her father and her mother is half insane. No matter what happens to her, she will not face punishment and blame.
People are cold and no one will stand up to speak for Ada.
This adaptation of HBO, even if it can make you laugh, is also a black humor, which will make you smile helplessly.
So what? This is not a work that pleases people in the first place, and does not need a sense of humor to prey on the audience.
When reading the Naples series and watching the episodes, the most intuitive feeling for me is that my whole body and mind are immersed in the dilapidated town of Naples.
Most of the scenes here are brief, focusing on prying into the inner world of the characters.
For example, in My Brilliant Girlfriend, there is an unforgettable scene where Lila and Elena try to walk from home to the beach.
When they came to them, they only heard about it, but they had never been to the seaside.
Maybe Lila made Elena skip class and ruin her plan for further studies; maybe she just went to see the sea, maybe she just wanted to escape from where she lived to take a breath, maybe Lila herself didn't know why.
We don't know exactly why this is the case.
But let’s be honest, let’s all have an easy life.
Whether it's the original book or the series, I really, really love this work.
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