The last episode of the last season of “The Genius Friend” arrived on the Max streaming platform on Monday night (11), putting an end to the series that led to the story written by the Italian author Elena Ferrante to the screens.
The screenwriter and director Saverio Costanzo responsible for adapting Ferrante’s book tetralogy for television, spoke at a press conference about the end of the project on which he has been working since 2017.
“It’s a way of ending that is mysterious, like life is. The good thing about this is that it doesn’t really end,” said Costanzo. “You don’t know exactly where…what’s going to happen.”
Spoiler alert: the following text contains spoilers from the last episode of the fourth season of “A Amiga Genial”
The series comes to an end without us knowing the whereabouts of Lila, nor of her daughter Tina, who disappears without further explanation in the penultimate episode. As her last act, Lila manages to surprise Lenu once again: the writer welcomes into her home the two dolls they used to play with as children.
“You have this twist that basically changes the way viewers and readers see everything. It was like that for me when I read the book. I mean, when I got to that twist at the end, I was basically rethinking everything I had read in a different way,” he said.
For Costanzo, it is the fact that the story written by Ferrante has an epilogue as strong as this that allows viewers (and him) to say goodbye to the characters they have followed throughout their lives.
“We had to give up 150 pages of the book, where there is a lot of information that had to be cut from the series because there was literally no space”, said the screenwriter. “Once you have such a strong epilogue, you have an ending. You know there is an end. So whatever you have given up before is not as painful.”
Working with Ferrante “is like having a ghost as a friend”
THE CNN, Costanzo also detailed what the process was like working with writer Elena Ferrante, whose identity is a mystery to the whole world – including him.
“It’s like having a ghost for a friend, because you don’t know what she looks like, but you feel like you have a friend, even if she doesn’t have a look,” Costanzo said.
Communication between the two, since the beginning of the series in 2018, has taken place exclusively via email. “I write for the publisher [que publica os livros de Ferrante]the editor writes to her, she writes to the editor and the editor sends her emails to me”, explained the Italian director.
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This content was originally published in Screenwriter of “A Amiga Genial” about the end of the series: “It doesn’t really end” on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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