'My Brilliant Friend' Season 2 Episode 5: Lila is on a sexual high while horror tropes depict Lenu's reality
There is a brief 'blink-and-you-miss-it' smile that blooms on Lila's face in last week's episode when Nino kisses her on the cheek (right after he kisses Lenu on the cheek). For Lila, who has known abuse all her life — first from her father and then from her husband Stephano — the soft kiss that hangs between being innocent and sensual is a revelation. It is the turning point in her campaign for Nino against Lenu.
Before this moment, Lila goes after Nino mainly to torment Lenu. After this, she starts seeing him as someone who can change her small, claustrophobic and violent world into a place where gentleness and sensuality exist. Her attraction to Nino and vice versa blooms to its peak as they become a private universe of two in this episode. Lenu, banished to the shore of their love, alternates between anxiety about the couple being discovered and a deep sense of grief and anger over losing Nino to Lila. In her mental anguish, she has no time for Bruno, the rich sausage factory owner's son whose wooing she finds annoying rather than charming, unlike Pinuccia who runs back to Naples after she develops feelings for him.
It is not a coincidence that the scene at the ice-cream shop and of Lenu losing her virginity to Donato Sarratore, Nino's father, has the same ominous musical score. Lenu haltingly approaches the back of the ice-cream shop to look for Lila and Nino like she is about to face a monster from her nightmares. And in a way, she does when she finds Lila and Nino macking uninhibitedly in the unused backyard like they are starved of each other.
In the other scene, when Don Sarratore sleazily propositions her on the beach using the words of a poet to disguise his highly inappropriate lust for Lenu, the horror score rises again. Just before Sarrotore approaches her, Lenu had been thinking of ways to eviscerate herself to survive the night on which she knew Lila and Nino were having sex.
The senior Sarratore is her weapon for self-punishment for not taking what she wants, boldly, like Lila always has. Despite acting as the reluctant go-between Lila and Nino, she continues to verbally upbraid Lila for her reckless lust, ending most of her scoldings with "do whatever you like" as if she is washing her hands off her stupidity.
Lila, in the throes of a sexual high that she has never found with Stephano or anyone else for that matter, shifts moods like the wind. She is, by turn, vulnerable, seeking Lenu's "advice" and "help" for her affair, and autocratic — forcing Nino to break up with Nadia.
Even in this emotionally charged episode, class forms the underbelly to interactions like when Lila is triumphant that Nino has chosen her, the "shoemaker's daughter" over Nadia, the "school teacher's daughter". Or when she tells her mother to shut up when she starts talking about shoe-making. She speaks of "catching up" to Nino in his studies, hoping Lenu can tutor her. Lenu, who would like nothing better than to slap her hard for her behavior and for stealing Nino, says cuttingly, "you're too far behind".
Of course, the lovers' bubble is just waiting to be popped. The offending pin, in this case, is a couple — Michele Solara, on a brief visit to Ischia with his girlfriend, Gigliola. Even though Lenu tries to distract them, Michele sees Lila emerging from the waves, holding hands with Nino. Though they disengage quickly, the cat is out of the bag.
Stephano is there soon after, hearing rumors started by Gigliola. As usual, his go-to is beating the crap out of Lila. Lila explodes confessing her infidelity saying that she realized how useless he is as a man after f***ing Nino. Stephano, his sense of manhood crushed by that single sentence, looks like a lost schoolboy for a second. Then, he says she is lying because he can't face the truth and says they will all leave the next day. On the jetty ride back home, Lila looks like she is attending a funeral, dressed in black, while Lenu mentally vows to have nothing to do with her or Nino.
It is surprising that neither Lila nor Lenu spot shades of the sleazy, womanizing Donato in his son Nino, who knows what a condom is in the sexually repressive 1950s Italy. How many women has he wooed and bedded to gain his experience and his ability to drive Lila mad, just like Donato had driven Melina mad so many years ago? Both girls know how boys turn into their fathers — be it the Solaras brothers or Stephano Carracci, himself. Yet, this experience still hasn't turned into life wisdom for the girls.
'My Brilliant Friend' airs on Mondays at 10 pm on HBO.
