"The Lying Life of Adults": Netflix's adaptation of Elena Ferrante is unbearable - voila! culture

Trailer for the mini-series "The Lying Life of Adults" (Netflix)

"The Lying Life of Adults" is the third adaptation of Elena Ferrante's books in recent years, after the HBO series "The Genius Company" based on the Neapolitan novels, and the film "The Dark Daughter" directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Of the three, the new Netflix miniseries is the worst.

Under the direction of director Eduardo de Angelis ("The Sin of Hope"), "The Life of Lies" loses most of the power of the source material on the way to the screen.

The plot describes the coming of age story of Giovanna, a girl who begins the story when she is 14. When she accidentally hears that her father compares her appearance to that of his slandered sister Vittoria, whose name is like a curse in their house, she asks to get to know her aunt to understand where she is headed.

The original is the ultimate coming-of-age story.

Aunt Vittoria is like the red pill in "The Matrix", the one who takes it removes the blindfold that keeps the truth from the heroine.

She exposes Giovanna to, well, the false life of the adults, to the poor and uneducated origins from which her family came, which is now upper-middle class, and brings her to sober up and see for herself what is really happening in her home.

Vittoria's character is described as ugly, but the ugliness is not only physical, but one that is expressed in her in view of her bitter nature, the hardness of her neck and the veins she carries in her body.

Perfect casting.

Valeria Golino as Vittoria, "The Lying Life of Adults" (Photo: Eduardo Castaldo/Netflix)

The casting for Vitoria is perfect.

It's a role that was originally written for Valeria Golino - that of the wild and hot-tempered Italian (just recently she did something similar in "The Morning Show", alongside Steve Carell).

Jordana Marengo, who is her first acting job, is also successful in the role of Jobna, even though she looks much older than her character - not least due to the malted haircut that was meant to make her look a little hairier, but without success.

However, beyond that, there are not many merits to the adaptation of "The Lies of the Adults".

In many ways it seems that the series does not really understand the novel on which it is based, and this is evident from the first moment.

One of the most memorable things from the original is its stunning opening sentence: "Two years before he left home, my father told my mother that I was very ugly."

In rendering it takes a full three minutes and twenty seconds before this sentence arrives.

It is more important for the series to open with a sketchy, allegorical sequence, one that even after the six episodes has no plot significance, in which Giovanna dives in her clothes and flip-flops to find her bracelet on the bottom of the sea.

Although the item is certainly important to the plot and especially to the motifs, even so the opening of it indicates incredibly poor judgment.

Even after her, the trial has yet to come.

First the camera focuses on a group of young people breakdancing on a broken bridge in 1990s Naples, before switching to Giovanna watching them from the balcony of her house.

Only then are the words spoken,

And even then it is of course done through narration by the heroine, similar to "The Genius Society", from the convenient outlet of book-to-screen editors.

Shortly after that, the event itself is presented to us, so that we understand as much as necessary that Jobna's interpretation did not match what was said one to one, instead of trying to illustrate it to us in a cinematic way.

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A feeling that the series does not understand the source.

"The Lying Life of Adults" (Photo: Eduardo Castaldo/Netflix)

The forced and flawed Shatanz that is present throughout the miniseries.

As if to remind us that this is not just a literary adaptation but a multi-sensory work that stands on its own, "The Lying Life of the Adults" tries with all its might to demonstrate cinematography that explodes from symbols and themes.

But in practice these only gnaw away at the powerful original ideas, and cause the adaptation to kneel under its own pretensions.

For example, the broken bridge - no doubt a spectacular location that makes for great photography - also becomes a dance floor for Giovanna herself, who breezes in from school to do so.

There is no connection between breakdancing and the other qualities of this book-loving girl, there is no further mention that she is interested in doing it, or even a pretense that she does it in front of her house, where her parents can see her.

It's just a lame and stupid moment that serves no purpose other than aesthetic visuals and too blatant rebellion.

Another, much more distressing example: many transitions in the series are presented in reverse gear.

Waves are drawn back, a drop (offensively fake, though most likely unintentional) makes its way up, cigarette smoke returns to the mouth and blacker and blacker.

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Bursting with self-importance.

From the fair in the fifth episode, "The Lying Life of Adults" (Photo: Eduardo Castaldo/Netflix)

The most refined display of the farcical approach in the series comes early in the fifth episode, where all the characters arrive at a kind of communist fair designed to bring to a kind of forced crescendo several storylines, which are originally separate.

At one point Jovena and one of her friends each grab the arm of an elderly woman who starts humming the Soviet folk song "Katyusha" at the head of a procession, and the others hum along with her.

who is she?

Why do they do that?

There is no explanation, it just happens.

This moment opens a long shot during which the camera passes all the main characters of the series in different parts of the fair (and also a large group of unknown people quarreling without anyone caring), finally reaching the stage, on which stands a communist band performing the song in full in front of the enthusiastic audience holding flags reds

This quasi-artistic whip is four whole minutes long, funny because it bursts with self-importance, devoid of events or words except for the lyrics.

This song choice, although one of the worst in the series, indicates something that for me is the source of the greatest suffering in it.

The soundtrack of "The Lying Life of Adults" is one of the most horrifying I've had to endure in my life.

The original music composed by Enzo Avitabila for the series sounds like something a teenage boy with no musical sense created on an old synthesizer he found dumped on the side of the street.

It mainly consists of disharmonic echoes and loops and the occasional sample of a girl - maybe the heroine?

It's not clear - with the oh-so-deep sentence pulled from a teenager's skill: "When you're small everything seems big, when you're big everything seems small. Each to his own."

In the selection of songs beyond that, the situation is only a little less bad.

The vast majority of the music interspersed throughout the six episodes is one that seems to have been collected to test the viewers' patience.

It is possible that these are Italian classics that will not be understandable to foreign ears, but it sounds more like a choice designed to challenge and exhaust on purpose.

Songs that are hard to listen to because they are schmaltzy or ungee or don't stand the test of time, and yet are often played in the background, sometimes from beginning to end.

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Successful in a first game role.

Jordana Marengo, "The Lying Life of Adults" (Photo: Eduardo Castaldo/Netflix)

If you insist, you can explain why the director chose a soundtrack so disharmonious, so unlistenable, to accompany a dramatic transition period full of bumps like the one Jobna is going through.

It is also possible to understand the idea of ​​the reverse gears, which may reflect the characters' desire to turn back the passing time.

But not only are all these schticks not really convincing, but they achieve the opposite effect - impairing the momentum of the story and regularly breaking the illusion.

In fact, this all seems like an attempt to cover up De Angelis' failure to breathe real, consistent life into the story.

The skeleton of the original still manages to shine through - therefore the characters are well characterized and the idea of ​​coming of age is presented in its entirety in a smart way.

But in the end, the crooked choices simply crook everything else, and the melodramas that Ferrante knows how to weave in such a complex, bewitching and marriageable way are embedded in stupid formal decisions.

Who knows, maybe this is also a conscious choice by the director: almost everything in "Life of Lies" seems staged,

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