The Brilliant Friend 3: that’s when it starts

We haven’t heard from Lila and Lunù for almost two years but, luckily, it’s only a matter of time before we see them again together. History of those who flee and those who remain, the third installment of the de The Brilliant Friend, in fact, will see the light on Rai1 Tuesday 8 February 2022, immediately after the Sanremo Festival. The series, produced by The Apartment and Wildside together with FremantleMedia Italia and Fandango Production in collaboration with Rai Fiction and HBO Entertainment, will consist of eight episodes divided into four premieres, with the grand finale scheduled for Tuesday 1 March. The shooting of the series, one of the most anticipated of the year, began in November 2020 between Naples and Florence and will finally allow Elena Ferrante’s loyal public to find Gaia Girace and Margherita Mazzucco, aged and in a new setting: that of the seventies.

The direction, entrusted up to History of the new surname to Saverio Costanzo, passes into the hands of Daniele Luchetti, while the screenplay is always written by Francesco Piccolo, Laura Paolucci and Costanzo himself, plus the advice of Elena Ferrante. The Brilliant Friend 3 it will resume where it left off, with Lenù trying to measure herself with her talent, striving to understand whether or not she is a true writer, and Lila struggling to survive, clashing with harassment and the struggle for low wages. In a recent interview with Variety, Luchetti explained that this third one will be inspired, in terms of atmospheres, by the New Hollywood, putting the actresses, the talented Gaia Girace and Margherita Mazzucco, in a position to improvise some sequences.

The central theme of the series will continue, however, to be the intimately bourgeois dimension of Lenù, which reminds the director a little of the uncertain and disenchanted gaze of Monica Vitti of the seventies, and the rough skin of Lila’s universe, “the brilliant friend “who did not have the resources and the possibilities to go on and be what she dreamed of as a child. Although the initial idea was another, to continue interpreting Lila and Lenù will always be Girace and Mazzucco, appropriately aged to be credible at the age level: «It was important to have the same characters, also because the actors have grown up. There is a visible maturity in their expressions, in their attitudes. We have made the most of this wonderful enrichment of which Gaia and Margherita are witnesses, as well as the other characters. It is not a fallback solution. It gives more depth ». There are many frames that we will see in this new season: from the wind-beaten Naples waterfront to the most characteristic views of Florence, with the costumes and cars of the time.