The brilliant friend 2: Lila's tragic marriage and Lenù's counter-current choices
No decline for the second season of "The brilliant friend" after the incredible (and global) success of the first.
Last night the first two episodes of the second season went on the air, inspired by the second book of Elena Ferrante's tetralogy, "History of the new surname".
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The two protagonists, Raffaella known as Lila and Elena known as Lenù face adult life.
Lila got married to Stefano, an initially kind boy and a hard worker who turns out to be a real ogre. Violent and greedy, Stefano decides to join the Solara Camorra clan, which reigns in the district and entrusts them with both the delicatessen and the shoe factory in which he and Lila work.
It is during the honeymoon that Stefano reveals himself to be an evil and violent person and when he returns home, none of the family (on the part of both spouses) takes a turn to see Lila's face devastated by the beating.
Lenù, on the other hand, continues her course of classical studies but is devoured by the doubts of having made a wrong choice. After all, his family and everyone he knows travel in a completely opposite direction to his. Even Lila, despite having dropped out of school, always seems more brilliant than her friend and always one step ahead in her path. Elena therefore begins to wonder if she should not leave everything and marry Antonio, a boy she does not love.
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The walk in the Lenù district
Lila says she does not want a child from her abusive husband and Lenù invites her to look for the positive side of the situation, but the two argue and Lenù, returning home, walks through the ward and runs into a series of women she knows, noticing how much they are withered, consumed, ugly by life.
And "how, observes the protagonist, if these women cease to be women, as if they lose all shape and forget their femininity once they are harnessed to a marriage they do not want.
They are tired, devoured and more and more like mothers, children, brothers, fathers and husbands who want them shut up at home, without identity with the sole purpose of procreating and looking after a mediocre if not bad husband.
A dramatic portrait of the Italy that was a few decades ago and which unfortunately still is for many women.
Impossible not to be moved and hope that Lila finally finds the courage to escape and Lenù that of emancipating herself.
