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Roberta Tabanelli, (De)queering Elena Ferrante: the screen adaptations of Troubling Love, The Days of Abandonment and My Brilliant Friend, Screen, Volume 66, Issue 1, Spring 2025, Pages 44–60, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjaf001
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Extract
With her tetralogy known as the Neapolitan novels, Italian writer Elena Ferrante has become a global literary phenomenon. Published in 49 countries and 35 languages, the four books that narrate the life-long friendship of two girls, Lila and Lenù, who grew up in the outskirts of Naples in the post-war years, have sold more than 16 million copies worldwide. Ferrante’s works are the subject of a fast-growing critical literature and of an intriguing fan fiction production,1 and her talent has garnered praise from many prominent public figures.2 The contagious ‘Ferrante Fever’ has driven admirers to devour the 1600-page-series, yet these readers have no visible likeness of their idol: ‘Elena Ferrante’ is a pen name, and since her 1992 debut novel, L’amore molesto/Troubling Love, the author has chosen never to appear in public.
Ferrante’s novels have inspired a varied corpus of successful transmedia adaptations, including three feature-length films – L’amore molesto/Troubling Love (Mario Martone, 1995), I giorni dell’abbandono/The Days of Abandonment (Roberto Faenza, 2005) and The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal, 2021) – and two television series, one of which is extracted from the acclaimed Neapolitan novels. Mario Martone’s Troubling Love premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and received a wealth of awards, including David di Donatello (the Italian equivalent of an Academy Award) for Best Director, Best Supporting Role and Best Actress, and Italian Golden Globes for Best Film and Best Actress. Lead actress Anna Bonaiuto was also awarded the prestigious Nastro d’Argento by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists. Roberto Faenza’s The Days of Abandonment, derived from Ferrante’s second stand-alone novel of the same title, won a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival.3 The Lost Daughter, which marked the directorial debut of US actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, is Ferrante’s first English-language film adaptation. Based on the 2006 eponymous novel, the film premiered at the 78th Venice Film Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Osella for Best Screenplay. Martone, Faenza and Gyllenhaal all wrote or co-wrote the screenplays of their films.4 The first book of the celebrated Neapolitan quartet, L’amica geniale/My Brilliant Friend, was transposed into an eight-episode television series in 2018, co-produced by the American cable network HBO and the Italian public service broadcaster RAI, under the direction of Italian filmmaker Saverio Costanzo, who also co-wrote the script.5 It is HBO’s first ever series to be shot in a language other than English. Ludovica Nasti, who played Lila as a child, received an Italian Golden Globe for Best Breakthrough Actress. It was followed by a second season in spring 2020, co-directed by Costanzo and Alice Rohrwacher,6 and a third season, under new helmer Daniele Luchetti, in spring 2022. Season 4, directed by Laura Bispuri, had its world premiere at the 23rd Tribeca Film Festival and was released in autumn 2024. The Neapolitan novels have also inspired a ten-episode radio drama,7 a comic book8 and various stage adaptations.9 Another eight-episode series, The Lying Life of Adults (Edoardo De Angelis, 2023), based on Ferrante’s 2021 eponymous novel, was launched on Netflix in January 2023.
