Saverio Costanzo talks about the “very difficult” collaboration with Elena Ferrante.
“It’s very strong, but never conservative,” Italian director Saverio Costanzo concluded this morning during a question-and-answer session in Thessaloniki when asked about his enigmatic compatriot Elena Ferrante, whose famous Neopolitan novels he adapted to create the popular series. My brilliant friend.
Costanzo co-wrote all 34 episodes of the HBO series. He directed the entire first season, with Alice Rohrwacher starring in two episodes in the second season, and Daniele Lucchetti and Laura Bisbury taking the reins in the third and fourth seasons. Costanzo is also known for feature films private (2004) which won the Golden Leopard Award at the 2004 Locarno Film Festival, and the Venice Competition title. Hungry hearts (2014).
Costanzo told the audience in Thessaloniki that he first contacted Ferrante through her publisher with the intention of adapting her other novel, Missing daughter. Costanzo said Ferrante was generous and gave him a favorable rights deal to try to adapt.
“She wrote me an email and said I could get the rights for six months for free to work on the script, and then if I made something good out of it, we could talk about money,” Costanzo said.
However, Costanzo said he was unable to create a successful adaptation of the book, which revolves around complex flashbacks and ambiguous narrative twists. Costanzo said he wrote back to Ferrante to tell her he was unable to adapt the novel, and did not hear back until the novelist’s publisher contacted him and asked if he would try adapting the Neopolitan novels. (Missing daughter It was later adapted for the screen by Maggie Gyllenhaal).
Costanzo said he quickly found his way into the Neopolitan novels, and thus began collaborating with Ferrante, with whom he co-wrote each episode alongside Francesco Piccolo and Laura Paolucci. Although Costanzo has never met Ferrante and does not know who she actually is. The name Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym, and the true identity of the novelist is unknown. All communication was done via email, Costanzo said.
“Writing to Elena Ferrante was not easy at first, of course, but once you start, you see that it is part of the creativity because she has already done 90% of the work in writing the books. After four seasons, I probably have one cubic meter of emails between us,” he said, adding that the novelist was constantly open to changing her work.
“She was very open to any changes because once you translate a book into a movie, you have to change everything, so you don’t change anything,” he said. “I don’t know who she is, but whoever she is or wherever she is, she’s very difficult.”
On the subject of Ferrante’s true identity, Costanzo has, over the years, strongly rejected suggestions that the novelist is a man writing a woman’s name. During the Q&A, Costanzo talked about why he believes the rumors have no basis in reality, citing conversations he had with Ferrante while writing. My brilliant friend Season three.
“I remember season three, I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t ready to direct again after four years,” Costanzo said. “I couldn’t live with the same shooting schedule for four or five years. So I said, ‘I’m not going to do it.’ And I said to her, ‘Let’s hire a woman to direct.’ And she said no.”
Costanzo said the reason Ferrante rejected his resignation and the proposal to appoint a female director was because she wanted to preserve what she saw as the inherent conflict that arises when a man partners with a woman.
“She told me that what we did, what we created, was the tension between men and women,” Costanzo said. “What comes out of this tension is an equal relationship. This is what the feminist movement is looking for.”
Costanzo explained how some of that tension came up between him and Ferrante, with an anecdote about the show’s casting.
“When I shared the cast with her, she had some really bad remarks, and they were wrong,” Costanzo said. “And that’s when I had to say to her, ‘Okay, this is my job.’ “You’re doing your job.’ And I was right. Most of the time, she was right. But in this case, I was right, and she told me so.”
Elsewhere, Costanzo said curiously that he couldn’t see a world in it My brilliant friend It can be produced today because of the time and money the production spent ensuring that the show’s crew could accurately communicate in the now-defunct Neapolitan dialect, used by the characters in Ferrante’s story.
“We worked very hard because we had the money to do it. Thank God we had the money. Nowadays, it would be impossible to do it. My brilliant friendHe said. “We basically set up a kind of laboratory where all the crew members, main actors and secondary characters got together and worked on the language. For six months, we did that.”
My brilliant friend It ran for four seasons on HBO and RAI in Italy. The series revolves around Elena Greco (Alba Rohrwacher) and the most important friend in her life, Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo (Irene Maiorino). After meeting as children in 1950s Naples, their story continues to cover more than 60 years, exploring the secret of Leila – Elena’s brilliant best friend and, in a way, her worst enemy.