In “The Lying Life of Adults,” the lies are elusive things. For those unfamiliar with the Elena Ferrante novel the new Netflix series is adapted from, hearing a premise about a teenage girl looking for answers about her estranged aunt might conjure ideas of generations-long cover-ups and long-held secrets.
What makes this TV version of the story — directed by Edoardo De Angelis and boasting Ferrante among its team of screenwriters — so entrancing is that it downplays the sordid. When Giovanna (Giordana Marengo) begins her search for physical evidence of her aunt Vittoria (Valeria Golino) and the origins of a family split, what she finds doesn’t necessarily contradict much of the story she’s told as she approaches her 16th birthday. “The Lying Life of Adults” is more about assumptions and misunderstandings and willful ignorance of a shared past, leaving the viewer to fill in those gaps, too. The process...
What makes this TV version of the story — directed by Edoardo De Angelis and boasting Ferrante among its team of screenwriters — so entrancing is that it downplays the sordid. When Giovanna (Giordana Marengo) begins her search for physical evidence of her aunt Vittoria (Valeria Golino) and the origins of a family split, what she finds doesn’t necessarily contradict much of the story she’s told as she approaches her 16th birthday. “The Lying Life of Adults” is more about assumptions and misunderstandings and willful ignorance of a shared past, leaving the viewer to fill in those gaps, too. The process...
- 1/5/2023
- by Steve Greene
- Indiewire
The pseudonymous novelist Elena Ferrante’s appeal to television producers remains as clear as the Tyrrhenian Sea. Sun-kissed Italian locations; prominent female leads, afforded greater agency than the Italian media have traditionally afforded their women; material that’s genre-adjacent, but open to more emotion than genre mechanics typically allow. As HBO’s much-lauded ‘My Brilliant Friend’ — three seasons in, headed for a fourth — has demonstrated, Ferrante’s flinty prose excavates not just time and place, but class and attitudes. That these projects function as deluxe soap is down to the abrasive element of social history salted into their fragrance and colouring: To wallow in these texts is to better understand how Italians used to live.
Netflix’s new six-part adaptation of Ferrante’s “The Lying Life of Adults” is framed as the coming-of-age of a sleuthy heroine; the mystery she stumbles into concerns her own extended family. When we meet...
Netflix’s new six-part adaptation of Ferrante’s “The Lying Life of Adults” is framed as the coming-of-age of a sleuthy heroine; the mystery she stumbles into concerns her own extended family. When we meet...
- 1/2/2023
- by Mike McCahill
- Variety Film + TV
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