'My Brilliant Friend' Season 2 Episode 7: Lenu fails to realize that it is Lila who is 'an almost', not her
Introvert Elena Greco aka Lenu (Margherita Mazzucco) has a type obviously. Just like she was drawn to Lila Cerullo (Gaia Girace), she was drawn to Nino Sarratore (Francesco Serpico) and in Pisa, to Franco Mari (Bruno Orlando) - people who she thinks are more intelligent and bolder than her - the sun to her moon.
Without their warm rays, she seems to wane into nothingness. After her move to Pisa, it is Franco who teaches her "to live, to love" and once he goes off to "start a revolution" leaving Pisa forever, she retreats into invisibility again, forgotten by his friends.
And as she does, the ghosts of her old neighborhood take up residence. First, it is the steps of her mother, Immacolata Greco (Anna Rita Vitolo). The sound of her limping across the floor, a sound she hated growing up echoes in the empty halls of her college residence.
But it is not a phantom sound, it is actually her mother who has come to take care of her because she is sick and alone. Now that Lenu needs her and is weak and bedridden, their interactions become more harmonious because Lenu reverts to being a baby. Her mother can, therefore, take care of her, seeing her as an extension of herself like many mothers do.
Her actions are paralleled in Lila's actions as a new mother. Her baby too is helpless and completely dependent on her for food and succor. And so it is easier for Lila to see her son as part of her because he sprung from her. (She emphasizes this ownership to Stefano by calling him Rino instead of Achilles.) She nurtures him and gives him what she didn't get -- a relatively violence-free home and toys to stimulate his mind.
She withdraws from the other men in her life - Stefano, Rino (her brother), and the Solaras brothers. All of them threaten and curse her for withholding her gifts but she takes all her ambition and invests them in her son Rino instead.
What is yet unknown is what will happen when Rino, her son, becomes separate from Lila as he grows up as Lenu has separated from her mother. Will Lila resent him too, the way Immacolata resents Lenu?
Lila had handed her notebooks to Lenu during lunch on one of her rare visits to the neighborhood earlier, to keep them away from Stephano who had started going through her things. It is these notebooks that Lenu reads while she is sick, maybe searching for the warmth of approval that she had lost when Franco had left.
Instead, she finds Lila's writing diminishes her and makes her feel like an "almost". She is unable to see that despite whatever Lila has written, it is not Lenu but Lila who is "an almost". Lila is the one with a series of false starts - from her brilliance in school to her ideas to revive her family's shoe business to her "princess wedding" to finally her 'love' for Nino.
Lenu, on the other hand, uses disappointments to soldier her way out of the neighborhood. Lila is still stuck where she started. The episode features Lila meeting her old school teacher who had so much hope in her. Her notebook relates how Lila worries that her teacher has finally figured out that she is stupid, just like the rest of the family and neighborhood.
It is a rare glimpse of the demons of insecurity haunting Lila whose brilliance is evident to other people but who herself needs a friend like Lenu to validate her brilliance. It says much about the relationship the two girls shared since childhood - Lenu as the audience and Lila as the performer. But as adulthood descends, Lila finds herself having to exit stage left while Lenu takes centerstage.
Lenu's mother points out as much, comparing the two with a note of pride. And yet, as always Lenu hears the taunt of Lila's words in the notebook over reality and throws the books into the river to erase her evaluation by Lila. She does it after her mother leaves and the act shakes off the traces of the old neighborhood from her life - be it her mother or Lila - and their expectations and evaluation of her.
'My Brilliant Friend' airs on Mondays on HBO at 10/9c.
