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Coming of age stories always involve family strife, mainly because families never seem to be ready to see their once-little kids turn into independent young adults who make their own mistakes. In a new Italian Netflix series, a teen in 1990s Naples inserts her coming of age story in the middle of an already virulent family feud. Let’s just say that she’s not going to likely bring the two sides together.
Opening Shot: A bracelet floats to the bottom of some murky green water. A teen girl, wearing a t-shirt, shorts and socks, swims to the bottom to grab it, then ends up letting it go.
The Gist: In 1990s Naples, Giovanna (Giordana Marengo) is a teen having a tough time in school. When her mother Nella (Pina Turco) reels off the lousy report card to Giovanna’s father Andrea (Alessandro Preziosi), he pinpoints the problem: Giovanna is starting to look like his sister Vittoria (Valeria Golino). Giovanna overhears this and gets concerned.
She has no idea what her aunt Vittoria looks like, but Andrea has blacked out her face in all of his photos of her. She tells her mother that she wants to meet her aunt, and Nella shows her where she lives on a map, in a part of Naples Giovanna has never been to. Andrea agrees to take her, citing the fact that she’ll find out that she’s nothing like Vittoria, who Andrea has found to be manipulative with people he cares about; it’s why he’s cut her out of his life.
After going to a daytime club with her friend Angela (Rossella Gamba) and getting into a scuffle with some of the crowd, Giovanna tells Andrea where in town she’s going, which is a more industrial, rougher part of the city.
Andrea takes his daughter to see Vittoria. We don’t see their interaction at first, and she tells her father on the drive home that she won’t see Vittoria again, but when we see their visit, it’s another matter. Vittoria is full of life, literally and figuratively squeezing all the juice out of an orange. She complains passionately that Andrea is too concerned with materialism and his academic career, and doesn’t appreciate an artistic free spirit such as herself. Vittoria tells Giovanna about the bracelet she gave her when Giovanna was first born; it was for her to wear when she was older. The two dance on the roof of Vittoria’s building. There’s no doubt that Giovanna is going to visit again.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In its very European way, The Lying Life Of Adults reminds us of The Lake, where a teen comes of age with a relative she never knew she had. The Lake is a lot funnier and faster moving, but the themes of the two shows are similar.
Our Take: Based on Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same name, The Lying Life Of Adults definitely goes at its own pace. Not a lot happens in the first episode, yet its running time spans almost an hour. We have scenes of Giovanna looking out at her neighborhood in the heights of Naples, scenes of people getting in and out of cars, and other scenes that wouldn’t take away from the plot if they were cut.
Ferrante, who is among the EPs who adapted her novel, and director Edoardo De Angelis want to give the show this atmospheric vibe, basically to show that the stodgy Naples where Giovanna and her family live is completely different from the kinetic slums where Vittroria lives. Giovanna is going to come of age in both versions of the city, and her time with her aunt has the potential to tear a hole in her relationship with her father.
Could the series have been told in fewer episodes? Probably. There are times during the first episode where we became disengaged from what was happening on the screen, because there wasn’t much going on. And we weren’t exactly enamored with the idea that Giovanna’s father was comparing his daughter to a sister he obviously has immense disdain for; it’s a bit of a shaky setup for the encounter between Giovanna and Vittoria.
But the family dynamics at play here are to interesting to ignore. We know that Andrea and Vittoria are polar opposites, and the things they say about each other seem to have shreds of truth in them but are also colored by years of anger and recrimination. With Giovanna putting herself in the middle of this feud, it’ll be fascinating to see how the feud accelerates.
Sex and Skin: In the intro scene where Giovanna is swimming for the bracelet while wearing her pajamas, her t-shirt almost nonchalantly rides up, exposing her bare chest. We’re pretty sure that’s not the last thing in this category that we’ll see in this series.
Parting Shot: Giovanna embraces Vittoria when her aunt tells her that they’ll visit her husband Enzo — whom she believes was wronged by Andrea — where he lives, “in the cemetery.”
Sleeper Star: Pina Turco, as Giovanna’s mother Nella, has had to suffer through this feud longer than anyone else, and we wonder if she’s really on her husband’s side in the whole thing.
Most Pilot-y Line: GIovanna’s friends Angela and Ida (Azzurra Mennella) tell her that she’s getting a little ugly. Ida clarifies that “your body is beautiful. Maybe you’re getting a little ugly because of your worrying. But that’s all.” We get the whole thing about friends being honest, but woah, that’s a bit too honest.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite its very casual pace, The Lying Life Of Adults has an interesting family story at its core that will inform how its main character comes of age.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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