The adult life of lies Check out the review of the Netflix series te

In The adult life of liesadaptation of Netflix for the book of the same name by the Italian bestselling author Elena Ferranteone of the ways teen Giovanna (Giordana Marengo) to rebel against the intellectual, upperclass upbringing of his parents is … to practice breakdancing on the viaduct that stands in front of the balcony of the middleclass apartment in which he has lived all his life. This is one of many additions to the book that the miniseries makes, almost all of which serve to add context, temporality, and locality to the original story.

The Lying Life of Adults, streaming, could only take place in Italy in the 1990s.The music is specific to the setting (“All That She Wants”, by ace of baseperforms alongside jewels of Italian pop rock), the clothes, impeccably chosen in relation to the social and political status of the characters at the time, and everything in the direction of Edward de Angelis seems to refer to the edgy “urban” cinema of the last decade of the 20th century think of the aesthetic developed by Steven Soderbergh in his first feature films or in the 1990s films of Paul Schrader.

The series’ dirty and narrow streets, paradoxically filled with boldly designed buildings, are filmed in impressionistic flights. Snippets of dialogue are played over and over in later scenes and become part of the soundtrack, overlaid with radio noise as if memory imperfectly brought them back and gave them a new meaning. To compose his scenario, De Angelis casts extras who, in his eyes and those of the elite audience, represent “common people” also for this reason displaying much more diversity than the privileged protagonists who define Ferrante’s bibliography.

This approach still produces caricatured performances driven by grand emotions that are (almost) always swallowed by social conformation. In the pantheon of teenage television and cinema appearances, Giordana Marengo is reserved and thoughtful, even in her rebellious outbursts; already Valeria Golino he balances his Vittoria between expansive gestures and the real pain that skillfully hides behind the crystal blue eyes and extravagant hair. Finally, Alessandro Preziosi paints an utterly menacing (but also quietly pathetic) picture of Giovanna’s father, a central figure in the disappointment that defines his daughter’s coming of age.

None of this is bad, of course. The Lying Life of Adults is obviously a miniseries, made with intention and talent from a technical point of view…its problem, oddly enough, is much more narrative. For while A Amiga Genial and A Filha Perdida have found bold ways to translate the inner monologues that so impress Ferrante’s writing into striking imagery and even amplify the impact, A Vida Mentirosa dos Jovens fails to grasp the relevance of its more symbolic meaning Turns how the author manages to charge banal objects and events with an emotional as well as political meaning.

Escaping this more subtle approach, the Netflix production resorts to literalism to express the inherent upperclass hypocrisy that Ferrante seeks to demonstrate in all of his work. As a result, the political thesis of A Vida Mentirosa dos Jovens becomes oddly more confusing than clearer: on the one hand, there’s the communistinspired (and atheist and antifascist) event that the series throws all of its characters into in the penultimate episode; on the other hand, the fast scene where the narration shows us Giovanna’s parents and their friends talking about the revolution while drinking champagne and tasting caviar (which we were able to observe very well ourselves).

Politically, Ferrante’s works are efficient in recognizing the complexities of problems that arise from social experience and her stories are based on specific experiences affected by the unfair circumstances of the system. Incidentally, this book finds particular relevance in that it focuses on the formation of a queer (and especially female) identity within this system and shows the tortuous paths that female subjects who deviate from the “norm” have to take when they want to assert their autonomy and their value in the capitalist cultural complex.

It’s an important, urgently grownup theme that the series summarily sweeps under the rug. In short, A Vida Menirosa dos Adults trades almost any trace of maturity for a youthful rebellion, a confidence in style over substance which is justified given its protagonist at the age of 16, but in a production run by made men, is difficult to understand and women.