My Brilliant Friend / L’amica Geniale  Some gay thoughts and scenes, Elena Greco had in book 2 that didn’t make it into the tv show(S02)

My Brilliant Friend / L’amica geniale  (2018 - present )

Lenu’s Florentine Apartment (L’Amica Geniale)

The thing about “My brilliant friend” is that both Lenú and Lila are pretty fucked up women with a lot of issues and traumas. They both were raised up in a huge violent environment and basically if you read the novels it’s pretty clear that a very important part of the plot is showing all the different types of violence women are exposed to and how abuse and sexism can adopt different forms and levels, but are always kind of traumatic. So for understand both characters and their decisions it’s essential to remind this. Because for both (yeah, for Lenú too, even if she finally leave the neighborhood and became a middle-class woman) violence is deeply normalized in their way of seeing the world and many attitudes that the reader/viewer may find scandalous, for them are normal.

On the other hand, it is important to understand that Ferrante does not create characters to be liked or friendly. Except for Enzo (because Enzo is a saint) all the characters in the novels/series with any relevance have profoundly negative aspects. They all have selfish, narcissistic attitudes or do things that harm others. Even "positive" or "friendly" characters can be very unpleasant (Pasquale is a good example) This is something that is seen right away with Lila, who sometimes has very machiavellian and terrible attitudes (or maybe it is just Lenú exaggerating things, but I genuinely believe that Lila -at least in her youth- could become very horrible) and of course it happens with Lenú. Lenú is not a kind narrator or a sympathetic protagonist. This is something that is not noticed at first because all her self-centeredness is justified by being a self-conscious teenager. But when Lenú leaves the neighborhood and starts a life that her friends can't even dream of, a life full of opportunities, a life that she continues to despise because she thinks that Lila (her friend who has been mistreated, who doesn't have a penny and who is labor exploited) continues to live great adventures while she continues to be an insignificant observer, there we begin to realize how terribly narcissistic Lenú can be and the lack of total empathy that she sometimes shows. But you also have to understand how Lenú's mind works. Lenú was always someone he watched, who lived life through Lila. Lila is the practical, she is the part that reacts, that is pragmatic. Lenú is the emotional part, all of it is repressed emotions that constantly consume her. She is the world of overflowing ideas and feelings. Lenú continues to see Lila (even when they are both already thirty) as the teenager who ate up the world and could do anything. She has a very childish view of her friendship, stuck in the time of their adolescence. And that happens with everything, it also happens with love. Lenú tends to idealize situations and people, that's why she is totally consistent as a character with what happens with Nino. For her Nino is a childhood dream, it always has been. And she doesn't care what she's heard about him or is aware that he's a piece of shit. For her, Nino is still the boy she liked when she was little, just like Lila is the friend with whom she read books and played with dolls. Lenú's tragedy is that she achieves everything that Lila would have wanted to achieve if she had the opportunity, but she idealized her friend so much since she was little that his mind still thinks that Lila is the one who has the upper hand. The friendship between the two is tragic and beautiful at the same time. Terribly complex, like themselves. Throwing hate at these two characters makes no sense. They are not good or bad, they are just survivors.

“until I can reach you, until the end, I will reach for you, purple you!” — jungkook (trans. cr. ryuminating)

jungkook in a white shirt 😳

Le pupille (Alice Rohrwacher, 2022)

Shinji Somai

- Typhoon Club

1985

The Daytrippers (Greg Mottola, 1996)

- Maybe she’s desperately in love with him. - Don’t be ridiculous. No one’s desperately in love.

The Daytrippers (1996)

🎬 Movie : Tune in for Love (2019)

“I’ve always wanted to asked you this.

How can you smiling like that?

But i’ve always wondered, is that genuine smile? Or is he just trying really hard?” —Mi Soo.

Tune in for Love (2019)

"Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything."

- Haruki Murakami. South of the Border, West of the Sun

Kim Go-eun as Kim Mi-soo in TUNE IN FOR LOVE (2019) dir. Jung Ji-woo